Creating One New Man Instead of the Two

We are told in Ephesians that “He is our peace, who has made us both one that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so bringing peace; and that this one broke down the wall of hostility between the two” (2:14). Now, this bond of peace is not a doctrine or philosophy or any kind of abstraction; it is a person, an actual person. The being that will break down that wall of hostility between you as you are seated here and the being that you really are is a person. That person is God. It’s the Son of God, and the Son of God and God are one and the same person.

Now here, a lady writes a letter and she said, “I saw myself radiantly perfect, but I mean perfect. And yet I knew that we were two, two persons. I knew at one time as I remembered I was not perfect, I knew it, and I remembered when I heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.” And now I know that as I looked at this perfection it was myself as I am now. So I woke having seen this radiant being that I am, and she was perfect. Yet as I woke I stumbled into the door and then lost my temper and bawled out my children for pouring soap on my nice clean carpet. So it must have happened in some other dimension of my being—for certainly it was not here where I lost my temper—when I saw my own perfection.” She’s right. While we are still wearing these garments of flesh and blood, let no one tell you that you will not lose your temper, that you will not do all the things that people do in this world. Are we not told that the perfect one, who was the pattern man, when he said, “Go tell that viper, Herod.” Are we not told in scripture of all these unlovely things that the perfect one said “You whited sepulchers,” and all the other words that go with it? While we are encased in a body of flesh and blood certainly we will lose our temper. We react just…maybe not as we formerly did…but then we were not ashamed of what we did…but now we pick ourselves up, as she did, instantly. She lost her temper with her children for pouring—well, who wouldn’t?—soap on her nice clean carpet after this perfectly wonderful vision.

So he is our peace who broke down the wall of partition and made of the two of us, made one. Now how is this brought about? We are told the primal wish of God was “Let us make man in our image, after his likeness.” We are told that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil.1:6). We are told that Jesus Christ is the image of God, the perfect image, who reflects and radiates the image of God, the glory of God; that he is the express image of God. Well now, that is the good work that is being done in us and when that image can be superimposed upon the one who is doing it and they are one, well then, you are God. There is only God in the world…there is nothing but God. So God actually took himself the limitations of man, just as you are, and he is working from within and working you into his image. And when the image is superimposed upon the one who is making it, it’s not you and the image, you are the Maker. You are God himself. Then he rises, enhanced by reason of the experience of making an image of himself that radiates his being and reflects his glory. So her vision was perfect, perfectly marvelous, all based upon scripture.

Now, here is another beautiful one. She said, “I found myself in a beautiful forest and here I am sitting on the ground leaning against a tree. Then I heard a voice calling, ‘Father, Father’ and I did not answer because I did not want to be discovered. Suddenly a youth appeared dressed as a shepherd boy, and it was you. You said to me, ‘Why did you not answer me? I’ve been searching and searching for you.’ Then she said to me, “You’re always searching for me, but you always seem to find me in spite of the fact that the Good Book tells us that after my labor I should rest on the seventh day. But you never let me…you’re always calling and you always find me…so you never let me rest.” Then she said, “I looked at you and I smiled the smile of an indulgent father, and then strangely enough, I, a woman—and I consider myself very much a female—felt that I was the Father. It didn’t seem strange to me to be a father. I was not a mother, and I was not a female, I was Father.”

Now here is scripture, the 4th chapter of Galatians, “When the time had fully come, he sent forth the Spirit of his son into our hearts crying, ‘Father! Father!’” (4:4,6). But the Father doesn’t want to respond. As we are told in the 44th Psalm, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!” (44:23). The Father is sound asleep in man. And when one awakens who is called the son of God—and all are the sons of God—that son awake is sent into the world to call the Father. And those in whom the time has fully come still do not want to respond. They always want to postpone the day of wakening, still holding on to these little garments of flesh and blood, but he always finds them. He always finds them and does not let them rest. He keeps on crying “Father!” So we are told in the 5th of John, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear him will live” (5:25). Well, she heard him so she is not far from the awakening. She heard him and recognized him. He was the shepherd boy, the one who was sent to do God’s will, for he was the Son of God, and the Son comes only to do the Father’s will, calling the Father in man to awaken: “Awake, you sleeper, and rise from the dead” (Eph.5:14).

So here in this world of ours, God became as we are for the sole purpose of making us, his image, as he is. And when the image is completed in us, so it superimposes itself upon the Maker of that image and they are one, then it’s perfect. As she said, “I knew I was perfect and I recall having heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.’” Well, the completed sentence is “as your Father in heaven is perfect.” “So I heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.’” When you are perfect the image is perfect, well then, you become one with your Maker, and you begin to awake from this dream of life, and the awakening is the resurrection. Without the resurrection this would be infinite circles, a repetition over and over and over again. Having moved around the circle unnumbered times, then comes the image and the image then turns into a spiral and moves up as the being who created it.

So here in this world, you can write all the documents in the world concerning peace…you’ll never have peace. You can write every contract in the world between nations, between people, between everything. You will not have peace until he, in you, has so made you that you are as perfect as he is perfect and the two become one.So “He is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” He breaks it down between the two so they aren’t two any more, they’re only one.And you walk without telling it to others, knowing who you really are. You tell it to the world and they only mock you, they laugh at you…because while in this world, as she is in this world, you will bump into a door and lose your temper, and someone else will ask in a way you think they should not and you’ll lose your temper…just as she did even though she has seen her own perfection.

So everyone in this world is here for a definite purpose and when purpose is revealed—and it’s only revealed through revelation—then it gives meaning to the whole of life. Without purpose, what has the world to offer? If tonight you owned everything that you could possibly buy with money and you had all that it takes, and tonight your soul is called? No, you will not die, I assure you. I’m speaking from experience, you will not die. The world will call you dead and they’ll cremate you, scatter your dust, but you cannot die. But you’re in a world just like this, going over the same things, over and over and over again. Oh, maybe not in the same situation, but just as solidly real as you are now; returned to a lovely beautiful form, twenty years old, to continue aging as we do here, to marry, and to lose your temper, to bump yourself into doors once more, until finally the image is perfect.When it is perfect and superimposed upon the maker of that image, then up you go into this one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all…and you are that one. That is the great temple, the living, growing temple, as we are told in scripture. It grows, for it’s added to every moment of time as one comes up and is incorporated into the living body of the living God. You will eventually know that you are that body; you are that Spirit, you are that ultimate being that is God the Father of all.

It seems incredible as you sit here a little person, as I stand here a very weak, little person, and that is my destiny? To know myself to be the Creator of it all, the whole vast world, to share with all in a unity, that one body, that one Spirit, that one Lord, that one God and Father of all? Yes all. And I am telling you what I have experienced and having experienced it, sent back to tell it, to record it, for just a short while in the hope that those who are on the verge of moving up in the same direction into the same body, and the same Spirit, may hear it and be encouraged to know that one did do it.

So when Paul makes the statement, “I stand before you on trial for the hope in that promise that God made to our fathers. O King Agrippa, why should it seem incredible to any of you that God raises the dead?” Why? Is it not the promise to our fathers? You can search the scriptures, where is the promise made?—right in the seed plot of scripture which is Genesis. And we are told in Genesis, “And the Lord said unto Israel in visions of the night”—read it in the 46th chapter of Genesis—“in the visions of the night.” And he said, “Jacob”—as you know, Israel was the name given to Jacob and Israel means “the man who shall rule as God,” not like God, as God, he is God. “Jacob?” and then Jacob answers, “Here am I.” Then the Lord speaks to him, “I am God, the God of your fathers. Fear not to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation. I will go with you down into Egypt and I also will bring you up out of Egypt” (Gen.46:3,4). That was the promise. You mean he only came down into this world? Well, this world is Egypt. Egypt is not a little place in North Africa; the world is Egypt and Egypt is the world of death where everything seems to disappear. It appears, it waxes, it wanes and it vanishes. So everything in the world comes in, grows, wanes and disappears…that’s Egypt. “I will go down into Egypt with you, but I will also bring you up again.”

“I stand before you on trial in these chains for believing in that hope that God promised to our fathers. And why do you think it incredible that God raises the dead?” (Acts26:6,8). We have no answer in scripture from the king, King Agrippa, he was the last of the great ___(??). That world was coming to its end, like our present British Empire. Well, it is coming to its end. Anyone born now who calls himself a prince is almost ridiculous in this fabulous world in which we now live. So they come in to inherit what, a fading empire…not a fading, one that is gone, all its glory is gone. So he comes in still a prince, Prince of Wales now in a matter of moments. And so here he stands in chains before the prince of that day whose kingdom was fading, but he still had to hold onto it. We are in this world, the same world here. It goes over and over and over.

So I tell you, God actually, literally became you, just as you are, with all the weaknesses, all the limitations of the flesh. And there is no peace in the world for you until the image that is being formed in you by the Maker of you is perfect as he is perfect. When they are superimposed one upon the other, well then, you awake, awake from the dream of life and you ascend into your true, true being, the being that is called the kingdom of heaven. That’s your true home…our commonwealth is in heaven. We are sojourners in this land that is strange to us, and we are enslaved while we are here and maltreated. All are beaten in this world.But have faith and set your hope fully upon that moment in time when the image is perfect, and it is unveiled within you, and you are the being who made it. Though you are the made, you are the Maker, for the Maker and the made become one as he breaks down the wall of partition, of hostility, between them. Then they aren’t two any more, only one. So you’ll return to your heavenly state as the God who came down and you are enhanced by reason of the descent into Egypt. So, it is as though you are speaking to another, but, really, in the end it’s not another. I purposely imposed upon myself this limitation. I have no sense of another now, yet formerly there were actually feelings within me of two.Now I have no feeling whatsoever of another. It’s simply the one who formed me into his own likeness and I awoke as he is. He and I are not two, we are one.

And so, this lady could see me coming in the garb of the shepherd boy doing my work, because I sent myself. The Father and the Son are one and the one that is sent is always called the Son. So he sends the Spirit of the Son into the world, into the heart of man crying, “Father, Father.” Read it in the 4th chapter of Galatians (4:6). And here the man who hears it—in her case she heard it—yet in the very end of her vision it didn’t seem strange to her that she was a man and the man was a father. Here in this world she is not married. She is very much a lady but she is not married, but very much a feminine person. And in her own words to me she said, “I have always shied from marriage. The very thought of marriage to me was offensive and the very thought of sex was always offensive.” And here she is very much that retiring being and still it didn’t seem strange to her that she was not only man but a father. The father who was hearing the word “Father” being called and he did not respond. He didn’t want to be disturbed. For, as she said in her letter, “Haven’t you heard? Do you not know it is said in the great book that after my labor I, on the seventh day, should rest…and you never let me rest?” No, the Son of God never lets the Father rest. He is calling forever, “Awake, you sleeper! Awake. Why sleepest thou, O Lord?” (Ps.44:23)

And so, the Father in man really cannot fully awake until he completes his work. “For he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:6). And Jesus Christ is the image that he is forming in you, for that is the image of God himself, the express image of God who radiates and reflects the glory of God. So when it is completed, well then, you will awake. So I am crying and crying through the night in the forest …and she is seated on the ground…she’s not alone, others are hearing the same voice. “For, I tell you truly,” said he, “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live” (Jn.5:25).They will awake from the dream of life and awake and return to what they were, only more glorious, more wonderful than they were when they descended from that exalted state. So everyone here is destined to fulfill that state, everyone.

Now tonight, we have quite a few friends—I haven’t seen a few of them in years—they haven’t heard anything like this, because they haven’t been with me in all the years. And so you will tolerate me for a moment to go back and pick them up where we left them off. I left them off with the law, not with the Promise. They heard nothing from me about the Promise unless they read my book that came out since I met them. They haven’t been to my meetings they told me tonight not since the Ebell.Well, that’s a long time and so The Law and The Promise was not brought out then. So for their sake, it is the same thing only raised to a higher level. But for those who only knew the law, let me now pick it up for you, just the law.

The law is very simple. There are infinite numbers of states, infinite numbers—the state of health, the state of sickness; the state of wealth, the state of poverty; the state of being known, the state of being unknown. They are only states. You’re always in a state. Every moment of time you are only in a state. The state to which you most often return constitutes your dwelling place. So we all have one state that we feel more at home in that state, and so we return to it moment after moment. That constitutes our dwelling place.

But if it is not a pleasant state in which to live, we can always get out of it. But we remain in the state and try to get out of it through external means…and that is not what we teach. You don’t get out of it by trying to pull wires from the outside, manipulating things on the outside. You get out of these states simply by a mental adjustment within yourself. As you fell into the present state either deliberately or unwittingly—chances are you did it unwittingly—so you are in a state and you are the life of that state and the state becomes alive and grows like a tree and bears the fruit of that tree. But you don’t like the fruit that you are bearing—it may be the fruit of poverty, may be the fruit of distress, the fruit of all kinds of unlovely things. Well now, how do I detach myself from this unlovely harvest that I’m harvesting all the time?

I do it by simply an adjustment in my own wonderful human Imagination. I ask myself what do I want instead of what I seem to have. When I name it, I ask myself, how would I see the world if things were as I desired them to be? How would I see them…what would the feeling be like if it were true? When I know exactly what the feeling would be like were it true, I try to catch that feeling. And to aid the feeling I imagine that I’m seeing people that I know well and I allow them to see me as they would see me if what I am feeling were true. I let them see me in my Imagination and when the whole thing is adjusted in my mind’s eye so that they see me as I would see them and it now produces in me the feeling I desire, then I sleep. I fall asleep in that assumption. That assumption is a state, that’s all that it is, it’s a state. Now, let me make that state as natural as I made the former state that I did not like. If I find myself returning to this new state constantly, all of a sudden it becomes natural. As going home tonight, it will seem natural to me to go home and undress and sleep in my familiar bed.

If tonight I went to some other place, no matter how glorious it is, beautifully furnished and everything at my command, it wouldn’t seem natural. When I leave here to go to San Francisco or New York and go into those lovely hotels, certainly, I pay much more money in these hotels than I pay in rent where I live, but it’s not as comfortable and not as natural. So you go to a hotel and you pay twenty-two, twenty-three dollars a day. Well, I don’t pay that sort of money in my rent, but it doesn’t compare to my natural state where I am. I feel so natural when I go home tonight and just get into my bed, get into my place. Well now, you must make this state just as natural. At first it seems unnatural like buying a new suit or buying a hat…it doesn’t seem natural. So you walk down the street and no one knows you, but you have a new hat, and you really believe that every one who passes by is looking at your hat, that they can see a new hat, and they don’t care whether you are living or not. But you are aware of the fact that it is new and until it becomes an old hat in your mind’s eye you are conscious of the fact that you are wearing a new hat. Well, you’re conscious of the fact that you are wearing a new state until you make it natural. So the state to which you most constantly return constitutes your place of home. I call it your home.

Now, most of us have this great weakness. We know what we want or we think we know what we want, and we construct it in our mind’s eye, but we never occupy it. We never move into it and make it natural. I call that perpetual construction, deferred occupancy. We don’t occupy it. I can have a lovely place where I think one day I am going to go, but I keep on postponing the day, postponing the day, and I don’t occupy it. I wish so-and-so were…and I name it. But if I wish so-and-so were as I would like them to be, that’s the state from which I view them. Well, I’ve had the state, I’ve built it, I’ve constructed it, but I don’t occupy it. Perpetual construction, all day long I have the state. If she were only and I name it, but I don’t go into the state and view her from that state…I don’t occupy the state. So she remains in my mind’s eye in the unlovely state in which I see her.

Now that’s the world in which we live. There are only states, an infinite number of states. You can’t think of a thing that you could not reduce to a state, but the life of the state is the individual when he occupies it, because his Imagination gives life to the state. You can’t give life to it from without, because God’s name is I AM. God’s name is not “you are” or “they are”; his eternal name is I AM…that’s the light of the world, that’s the life of the world. So, if I would make a state alive, I must be in it. So I can say I am here. If you are here, what are you seeing? Well, I am seeing her and she is lovely. Things are just as I’ve always desired them to be for her. So that’s how I’m seeing her right now…I’m in the state.

Now make that state natural. Sleep in that state for her sake and then you’ll make that state and incorporate it into your own lovely state so that whenever you think of her you’re thinking of her from that state. You can take everyone, one after the other, and make it a natural thing for them until finally when you discuss them or refer to them or think of them, it is always from that state. Others may not see them in that light. It doesn’t really matter what they think. I’m quite sure if I took some survey concerning what people think of me in my small world, no two would agree. Some would say, well, he’s a charlatan, why, he’s a deceiver; others would say I think he’s the nearest thing to God that I’ve ever seen. You have all kinds. What a range, from the devil to God, and all about the same person based upon the state in which you are when you’re called upon to define me. And so, you define me based upon your state. So, everyone in this world could be what he would like to be if he knows this principle and applies it. We are the operant power; it doesn’t operate itself. I may know it from A to Z, but knowing it is one thing and doing it is another. Can I really do it? Well, I can do it…then do it. Don’t say knowledge is enough. Knowing it will not do it. I am the operant power.

So, for you who are here for the first time in many years then pick it up from there, because we’ve had a long interval between the law and the Promise. Because I fell heir to the Promise in its completeness back in 1959 and if you haven’t heard me since, then what I have been teaching since this revelation from within me would be something entirely new as far as you’re concerned…like a new world, a new language. Yet I cannot deny the law, for I came not to destroy the law and the prophets who prophesied of the law and prophesied of the Promise. I came not to deny or in any way to obliterate them but to fulfill them. As I stand here before you tonight I have fulfilled them; I have fulfilled the Promise in its entirety. And all I ask is that you share with me your fulfillment of that wonderful Promise.

Now, I’ve told you that in the resurrection man is above the organization of sex, and in the resurrection man can change his sex at will. I’ve been waiting for someone to bring forward an actual vision to testify to the truth of that statement. Well, one came forward in a letter that I got today. He is here tonight. He is married and he has a lovely girl and he is every bit a man. His attitude toward sex is always the opposite, that is, the man. Yet in his experience, he said, “I found myself lying in a bed and I’m a woman and reveling in the feeling of being a woman and wanting not men but one man. I knew exactly the man that I wanted…he was Oriental in caste, of olive skin. And I knew exactly what I wanted, and here I assumed that I found him and he appeared. It was exactly as I had assumed: here is a man, olive skin and he was Asian. I felt so thrilled.” He didn’t carry it through to any act whatsoever. It was simply that at that moment he woke and said, “Does it have any significance?”

All in the world! You only verify the truth of what I’ve told you from experience. I’ve told you that in the resurrection man changes his sexual garments at will and in the resurrection he is above the organization of sex. He creates without the divided image of male-female. And so you’ve had it, you’ve had the proof of what I’ve told you and you now know from experience that it’s true. Well, he trusts me implicitly concerning all the other things I’ve told him. But I will say to him, you, too, are on the verge, for this is really moving toward resurrection. So what you had is proof of what takes place only in the resurrection… and you had it. So I think your vision was perfectly marvelous, perfectly wonderful. Here he is now in this room and he came back to this world surprised that it could have happened to him because he’s such a man. But in the end, you are every being in the world.

Like this one who is unmarried but so feminine and she finds herself responding to my call as the shepherd boy calling “Father, Father” and she responded, but she hid. She wouldn’t answer my call, but she said, “You always seem to find me.” I always will in eternity, for when you are sent you cannot return void. For the one sent is the Word of God and he is the Son of God, and he comes back bearing the fruit of his efforts. I shall not return unto my Father void. When I come back I will bring back that for which he sent me, that purpose for which he sent me. And so, I stirred in her the feelings of the fatherhood of God.

So, you who are going along with me on the Promise and those who are here for the first time in a long interval, pick it up, and still apply the law. Don’t for one second fail to do it, because while we are in the world of Caesar, we must master this principle and live knowing there are only states. There is no such thing as a good man or a bad man. He’s in a good state as he conceives it and the other one is in a bad state as he conceives it, but the occupant of the state is really God. And so as Blake said in his Visions of the Last Judgment:“From this you will perceive I do not consider anyone either good or evil, just or unjust, but simply to be those who unknowingly fell into states.” They fell into states, identified themselves with the state, and then they were pronounced by others to be good or to be evil. They are only in states.

So tonight, if you are unemployed or you find it difficult to get promotion in your present employment, or you are in need, remember all the solutions of your present state are still states. I hope I have made clear how you move into a state. You move into a state by knowing how you would see the world if things were as you desire them to be, and then you begin to see them in your mind’s eye as though it were true. And then you sleep in that assumption just as though it is true. That assumption, though at the moment is denied by your reason and your senses, if you persist in it and make it natural, will harden into fact.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: Are there circumstances at times which conditions will cause reverse action to take place? I have had some circumstances work perfectly in which that which I have desired to manifest has done so. Yet there have been others that worked in the reverse fashion. An example: I wished to demonstrate an appearance of money, a certain denomination, and in so doing I convinced myself I had received it already. It did occur, but in a rather strange fashion. About three months from that time period I found myself in an auto accident which cost me exactly this amount of money that I had imagined to be mine. So literally, it was taken from me rather than presented to me. I feel that it was a result of that, but perhaps in some way I had mis-worked the principle at the time.

A: Well, I would not relate that as reversal in that sense. That is far deeper than our present state…the present one will come. But if you go back far enough, you planted that and did not recognize the harvest when it came up. You entertained the sense of loss somewhere farther back and then came the harvest which you did not recognize. Now, if you are self-persuaded of the amount of money that you lost in the accident, then do not go back on that, that will come. And I hope you will be awake to recognize the harvest equal to the time of sowing. But you do not remember the sowing that brought about that accident. So everything in the world is coming in, and this would be a world of sheer hell forever if there were no resurrection to lift us out of it…only cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. It would be terrible. Nevertheless, we are living in such a world and you planted it somewhere. You cannot go back. I wouldn’t even go back…you planted it and you reaped the harvest; you lost that amount of money. Now you also planted that sum of money to come in a way that you did not know, did not expect. It will come! Don’t think for one moment that that was a reversal of that. That was a harvest of something you did.

Q: How, when you find yourself in a period of negative harvesting, can you work out of that state?

A: In the midst of the bad harvest plant…keep on planting lovely things in the midst of it.

As you are told in Galatians, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, as a man soweth, so shall he reap” (Gal.6:3). So don’t deceive yourself, you’re going to reap it, but admit the fact I must have planted it or I could not be reaping it. It had to be planted, but now I will not condemn myself. I’ll start planting in the midst of this horror the lovely things I should have planted prior to this moment and plant them now. They will come up as this present harvest that is unlovely came up. It always comes up. But man goes out after an argument with someone and feels sorry for himself…that’s planting. You get into an argument with your wife or she with you and then you are sorry that these things happen in a loving relationship, and then for a moment you entertain certain unlovely thoughts…that’s planting. They’re going to come up, everything’s going to come up. But if we are alert we’ll recognize our harvest. The old, old story: I’ll go into the back and eat worms getting even with mother, and so we do it whether we are children or adults.

Now, the lady who saw herself beautiful, altogether beautiful and perfect, the word she used was perfect, and she remembered when she was not, and she also remembered when she heard the words “Be ye perfect.” Well, haven’t you heard lovers say of each other “We were made for each other”? Well, these were the two lovers when they become perfect, and they can mate, and be one, only, in fulfillment of scripture. And he leaves everyone and cleaves to his wife and they become one. So, they were made for each other. That is a statement I think everyone in our world has heard. How often I heard it “Why, they were made for each other.” If they were made for each other, it’s just in the sense of perfect peace because they are one. You can’t fight with yourself in that sense. You always create some mental image to fight with it and then you are two, but not when you are one. So if my image is superimposed upon me and loses itself in me as my very being then we are one.

So in the midst of an unlovely harvest, plant. Nations just like individuals…a nation has a fifteen percent loss in its harvest in the course of a year. All right, who’s doing it? You find the world entertaining all these unlovely thoughts of a certain person, a certain family, a certain group, but the God in you sees only your heart. He sees your intentions, your motives. He doesn’t see the external act, that doesn’t mean a thing to the God in you. There are nations in this world and there are individuals who will do everything for show, for the external act, the gesture…the gesture is important. I read here recently that Peru has expropriated one of our oil companies, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and they valued that at $160 million. Peru made the grand gesture and publicized it and gave them a check for $160 million. Well, the whole of South America saw the grand gesture, but they stopped payment on the check the moment they issued it. But they aren’t publicizing that. They told how they paid the $160 million, and they stopped payment. Then they brought suit against Standard Oil of New Jersey for ten times that amount, and that over forty-four years they had extracted so much more than they claimed that they had, they owed them that much more. So therefore now they are suing for a billion…having paid and pulled back the payment. But South America is totally unaware of the stopped check and to them they feel that they paid the $160 million. That’s the gesture. So they live on gesture and not on intent.

But God sees the intent, not the gesture. So when the sons came before him, and the first one was tall and majestic, he said, “I have rejected him.” Samuel thought, “Surely he is the one that you’re going to anoint in the place of Saul.” “I have rejected him.” And he marched them all by, “I reject him.” Then came the last one, David, and he said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is he” (1Sam.16:12). He saw the heart, for he speaks of David as “a man after my heart who will do all my will.” So it is the intent that God sees, he sees the motive; doesn’t see the gesture at all.

I know a friend of mine in New York City, awfully nice chap, and a mutual friend was distressed. The mutual friend turned to him and asked for a certain loan to take him over the heap. He said, “I’ll tell you how to raise it. You go to say six or a dozen of us, ‘Put me down for $150 a month.’ Go to Neville and he’ll give you $150 a month…and then Neville’s other friends; and you’ll raise, say, $1,500 a month. Say to all of them, ‘Don’t look for one penny of this money until six months goes by. In that six months, I will find a job and I’ll be on my feet.’” So he made the gesture, “Put me down for $150.” So on the strength of that he came to me and I said, all right, put me down for $150. Goes to my friend, who was a very wealthy man, and he said, “Put me down for $250.” He got his $1,500 a month with a six-month guarantee that no one would look for a penny until six months.

He goes to the first one who suggested the idea and he says, “Oh, what a terrible time to come to me. This is the time I don’t have a nickel to put out.” All the others of us met our obligation, but he made the grand gesture. Had no intention from the very beginning of giving him one penny…but we fell for it. All right, eventually he paid it back, paid every penny back. But here was one who went through life that way. His whole life was one of a gesture; he owed every person in town and went right through, always this grand gesture….owning apartments, owning cars, owning country homes, owning all kinds of things…and owning nothing. But he lived that way… in the grand gesture.Well, God sees only the heart, sees the motives, the intent, and doesn’t see the gesture. And the world has so much to do with gesture—to be well-dressed, to be presentable, and all these things. God doesn’t see that. That something that no one sees he sees. He sees the motive behind the gift of bread. Was it given with the intent of one day demanding more or was it given without hope of return, no thought of return?

Oh, I could tell you these stories time and time again because I’m speaking from experience, I know them. One chap in New York City came on when I didn’t have any money, didn’t have much, and I thought it was his pleasure…I thought it was. And so, he would bring in on a week night, say, a round of sandwiches and maybe a few cartons of milk and things of that nature. No liquor, because he didn’t have that much…he was an impresario. And one day came during my lectures here, I was living at the Town House, and I got a letter from him and a little note on the inside where he had itemized all the sandwiches and all the milk, everything, the pickles…where he sat down and ate everything…and not I alone but five or six of us got around and ate. He brought it in and that was his pleasure…we thought it was his pleasure. He itemized the entire thing and then sent me the whole thing, and said he wants the money immediately. So I sat down and wrote him a check and sent it off to him. Then he wrote back asking if I could let him have, now, $500. I said no thank you. So I sent him the check…he brought it up to something like $350. Well, in those days you could buy a sandwich for twenty cents. How he arrived at that figure I’ll never know, but it came to $340-odd and I sent it without question. I sent him a check for $340.

So he went to his little grave about ten years ago and he’s gone forward. At least that account has been closed. Like Socrates, “Give him a cock…I owe him a cock. There’s one thing I must pay before I die. I’m taking the hemlock tonight, but please give him a cock, because I owe him a cock.” So he went off with his slate clean. As far as he is concerned my slate is clean. I gave him the $340-odd, but I don’t know how he arrived at $340-odd when he brought it in as his grand gesture. He wanted to have a feast and it was our place, so he came into my apartment, and we put on the coffee and made coffee, and then he would have milk, and he brought all these things. Then he had itemized it and kept it…even gave me the dates. How could I check it? So you see, he was doing everything with an intent and that gesture was as phony as a three dollar bill.

So in this world of ours be normal, be natural. You don‘t have to do anything to anyone, go within yourself and appropriate a state. Then if it takes 10,000 people to aid the birth of that state, 10,000 people will come…without their consent, without their knowledge. Then they won’t have to send after many, many years a little bill, saying how good and Christ-like and generous you were, and pay it up, and pay it now.

Thank you.