Faith Is Loyalty to Unseen Reality

You should find tonight a very helpful message. We’re told that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.” By faith, we understand the world was created by the word of God, so that things which are seen were made out of things which do not appear. If you see it clearly, you will see that faith does not give reality to unseen things. It is loyalty to the unseen reality that gives meaning to the word faith. All things exist, eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation.

So, on this level, the shadow level, we do not see the reality.We do not see the source, the cause of it all. That’s where we are called upon to exercise faith, loyalty, to unseen reality. It really is the abandonment of self. It’s an act of self-commission. A man cannot commit himself to what he does not love.And Scriptural faith is faith in God. So, any idea that we have of God, which does not spontaneously call forth out of our heart the feeling of love, is not a true idea of God. For the whole basic matter is that God is love. I speak from experience. I stood in the presence of Infinite Love. And it’s man.

So, I do not have the problem that others would have concerning this presence that is Love. I can yield to him instantly, or I know he exists. I know he exists in me. I also know he exists in you, but you may not be aware of it. I can only ask you to believe it; and yield completely to this presence within you, for by him all things are made. And without him was not anything made that is made.

So tonight, we will show you what I have done in the past with great success and how it operates. Now, if I wanted something in this world, and who doesn’t, I would formulate an act, which would imply that I have it. And then in my imagination, I would simply, having performed that act, I wouldyield completelyto this being within me to execute it. I would fall off into sleep convinced that he heard me, that he saw my act in faith, for we are told in that same 11th chapter that I quoted when I first started, the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that we must come to God believing that God exists. For unless we believe that he exists, we cannot please him.

So, who would draw near to God must believe that he exists. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. And so, if I took the 13th chapter of Corinthians, Paul’s wonderful hymn,In Praise of Love,and paraphrased it, “Though, I speak in tongues of men and angels. And though I had the power of prophecy that I understood all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I gave all that I have and gave it away. Though I gave my body to be burned and had not faith, I cannot please him.”I cannot please him without faith.Because I am not on the surface level of my being, I am not going to do it. I simply yield completely to him having acted. It’s an act of self-commission. I perform the act. What act? I act as though I had what I sought. I act as though I heard that you have what you asked of me. I perform an act and then I yield completely to that depth of my own being who is God and allow him from that depth to externalize it for me, as he tells us in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, “Your ways are not my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.”

So do not ask how it’s going to be done. All I have to do is to completely yield to this being within me, for he has ways and means that I, on this level of my being, know not of. I rise then under compulsion. And under this compulsion, I go through a series of events, which will lead up to the fulfillment of that to which I yielded. I assume that it’s done. And then I commune with myself and give thanks within me that it is done. And it works in every way, even in the most marvelous things like this, for instance. My friend, he’s here tonight. He didn’t think he could make it tonight, But I got his letter this week. He said, “Last week, having heard you over the years and having received a hunger from your interpretation of the Scripture, what we are told in the Scripture, in the book of Amos, ‘I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be a hunger for bread or a thirst for water but for the hearing of the word of God.’” When that hunger comes upon you, not a thing in this world can satisfy you, but an experience of God.

Now he said, “I am a stockbroker and things have been very, very slow since the bottom of 1970. The market has risen, but people with money will not come into it because, undoubtedly, they were burned prior to this. Yet the market is really healthy today, it’s growing and growing and growing. Yet, I must confess things have been slow. I have a wife, I have a daughter who is a minor, I have obligations in life. And yet, in spite of the fact, I should really think of these things first, the hunger for an experience of God supersedes all other hungers. And so, I went home from your meeting and I said to myself, ‘I commune with myself’—for you taught me to believe that the self, the depth of my own being is God, that sensible awareness that is God. I said, ‘God, you sent this hunger upon me, a hunger for an experience of you. Give me, I said in the 86th Psalm, show me a sign of your favor, just a sign of your favor.’ Well, I had a dream, which I did not recall until Friday morning on the way to my office. As is my custom, I turned on your tape. I carry a tape with me and on my way to the office. I turn it on and I listen to that first. Something there clickedwithin me and the memory returned. And I remembered the dream of the previous night. And the dream was this. I found myself in an ancient world. I knew from the feeling, from the atmosphere, from everything about it, it was an ancient world. And suddenly a youth popped up over a wooden fence and leaned against a post and instantly I knew that he was David. Here is David. I knew he was my son, yet he didn’t speak, I didn’t speak, but it didn’t come until I was driving on the freeway, driving to my office. I have no memory of the previous experiences that you say one must have prior to the coming of David. So, I’m a little bit confused. Was that an apparition? Was that a foreshadowing of the event that must take place?”

I will say to him now, as he in his office, yes, it’s the most wonderful foreshadowing. For when it happens, you’ll be so stirred, you’ll awaken from the state. It won’t happen that way. It will happen out of your own skull. Your skull will explode. That’s how it happens. The whole thing is contained within man, within the skull of man. And when David comes in the true form, he actually comes after an explosion in your own skull as though the whole thing came to an end. And then when the whole thing settles, he stands before you. And he calls you Father and you know he’s your Son and he knows you are his father. And then by this relationship, you know you are God. So, this is the most marvelous adumbration, for sharing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way, but who knows the time it could happen now in the fullest of itself tonight, tomorrow. I am not going to predict when it’s actually going to happen. But I do know it will happen. He’s been given a sign. Show me a sign of thy favor and the sign came.

So, I tell you tonight’s subject is on faith and faith is something that we must all grasp the significance of. For without faith, it is impossible to please him. And if he makes all things, good, bad, and indifferent, and makes them through faith, find out the mystery of faith. Now, faith does not give reality to the unseen things. It is loyaltyto the unseen reality for all things exist. If you only saw it, everything in eternity exists, man exists. Man is part of the eternal structure of the universe. He doesn’t grow out of a worm as our evolution is saying. Evolution is confined to the affairs of man not to the creation of God.

Yes, I take a hoe and then I turn from a hoe, digging the little land with a hoe into a tractor. Then I’ll find something far better than the tractor. So, I will swim across the ocean or rather swim across a little river. And then I will find a raft that will take me. Then I’ll find a little boat that will take me. Then I’ll put a sail on it and that’ll do better. Then I will take something more than the sail and I’ll find something with steam. Then I’ll go beyond the steam and I’ll find nuclear energy. And this is simply evolution in the affairs of man. So instead of walking across the continent, I now fly across the continent. That’s evolution in the affairs of man, but there is no evolution in the creation of God. It still remains a theory, a marvelous theory, and we are all under compulsion to study it and, all right, to pass our lessons in evolution as though the thing was proven. There isn’t one single bit of evidence in the world to support the theory, the hypothesis of evolution, not one. Yet, it’s compulsory in all the universities of the world as though it had been proven—in the affairs of man, yes, but not in the creation of God.

Man, as he is, and all things as they are, there are eternal parts of the structure of the universe. Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. So, when God said, let us make man in our image, man existed. He didn’t say, let us make something and call it man. Let us make man, man existed, in our image. And God became man. There’s no way to make him in his image until God actually becomes man. So, God became as we are that we may be as he is. And he’s not pretending that he is a man. He has to completely forget that he is God and lose all memories of his power that is God, and take upon himself, the weaknesses and the limitations of man. And in this, he now is pouring himself into hisown likeness, which is God. He’s raising within himself that which he became, redeeming everything in his world. That is the power that is God.

Now, while we are here as man, you want to be and you name it. You want to be successful in the world of Caesar in dollars and cents, nothing wrong with it. You want to be a successful doctor, successful lawyer—I don’t care what it is you want to be, well then, formulating so it will read your mind’s eye, what would it be like if it were true? How would you see the world if you were now the man that you would like to be? See it in your mind’s eye and then yield yourself completely to the depth of your own being. How do I do that? You fall asleep in the assumption. I dare to assume that I am the man that at the moment reason denied and then fall asleep in that assumption, leaving it completely to the depth of my own being to externalize it in my world. I will wake tomorrow morning under compulsion to do certain things, which I had not formulated, I hadn’t determined. I’ll find I’ll meet the right people. I’ll do this. I’ll do that. I’ll do the other. And it all adds up towards the externalization of my assumption. Just as in his case, he now has a sign of God’s favor. The depth of his own being responded to his abandonment. It’s a complete self-abandonment. And I can’t commit myself to what I do not love. I can’t do it. So, if my idea of God does not bring forth within me the sense of love, well then, I have the wrong God.

If I know that he’s even full of love, believe me, he is, but the day will come, you’ll have the actual experience and you will know that God is all love. I stood in his presence, and God is man. The world says God is not a man, he’s an impersonal force, they’ll say; he is this; he is that—God is man. The Ancient of Days, without beginning, without end. As is said concerning David, although he was a youth, he seemed to have no beginning, no end. He seemed like the Ancient of Days. And yet he was young, as described in the book of Samuel. Here is this youth, just as described in the book of Samuel, the 16thchapter, the first Samuel. That’s the one I saw. That’s the one you are going to see. Well, where is he now? He’s within you. “He put eternity into the minds of men. Yet so that men cannot find out what he has done from the beginning to the end.” That’s what he put into the mind of men. That’s what he put there, the Father and the Son. God himself entered death’s door, the human skull. And he laid down in the grave, the human skull. And he is dreaming the dream of life that man is dreaming.

And in the end, he will awake. And when he awakes, he is the being in whom he ended. The being in whom he awakes. So, you are John, he awakes as you. And because he was a father before he entered you, when he awakes as you, you are a father. And because his son, before he entered you was David, when you awake, your son is David. David of Biblical fame is the son of God. That’s the Messiah. That’s the Christ. That’s the power under wisdom of God. So, within you is that power, within you is that wisdom to do anything that you desire in this world.

So, this is the faith of which I speak. How do I do it? You can sit right here and you go to bed at night. As you’re told in the 4th Psalm, “Commune with your own self, upon your bed and be silent.” You don’t commune with another. You commune with your own self— that’s God. For the self of man is God. When you sayI am,that’s God, there is no other God, but you don’t see him. Now, he is becoming visible. The darkest night in the world was when God became invisible. He told the story to all of us before we set forth, then he became invisible and took up his residence in us.

He became invisible and in us he is,I am—my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. So, I don’t see my imagination but I see objects in space. For imagination is the reality that is causing these objects in space. So, I see the fruits of its activity, but I do not seeitbecause it is invisible. The day will come, I will see it. I have seen it. He is the Ancient of Days just as described in the seventh chapter,the book of Daniel, and also in the book of Revelation, just as he described: he has no beginning, no end. He is the Ancient of Days. But he’s Infinite Love, there’s nothing but love. Yet he will wait on us just as swiftly and as indifferently when the willing up is evil as when it is good. For it is he who does all things. He said, I kill, I make alive;

I wound; I heal. I do all these things and none can deliver out of my hand. So, if the willing man is evil, he will execute it; if he is good, he will execute it—because there is no other creator. So, it’s entirely up to man, what he imagines. What am I going to imagine? But remember when I imagine, I must imagine, and then completely yield. That is faith. For by faith, we understand that the world was created by the word of God. What word? A spoken word? You’re told in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God; was God himself and his son—and his son is David. I have found in David, a man after my own heart, who will do all my will, any will, good, bad, or indifferent, is that power in you for he is defined in Scripture as the power of God and the wisdom of God.

So, the power and the wisdom to create anything in this world are housed within man. That is David. When man comes to the end of the journey, there’s an explosion within his head and then that power and that wisdom of God comes out personified as that eternal youth, who is his son. His son is David. And you are the one who awakes and you are the Lord. The Lord called Jesus. So, who is Jesus? An eternal question. I read in the morning’s paper, rather yesterday morning’s paper, that the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke, the first Archbishop ever to speak at St. Patrick’s in New York City. And the Cardinal introduced him. He had a standing ovation, they turned the crowds away. The Cathedral was filled to capacity. And this Archbishop of Canterbury, he spoke to the crowd and he went up to Riverside Church and he spoke there. He had seen in the interval, he sawJesus [Christ] Superstar;well, I haven’t seen the play. And he commented on it. He didn’t quite describe it. He said, at intervals, it comes close to a certainChristian faith. There are certain passages in it he thought offensive, but they did not say who is Jesus. Neither did he, the archbishop; he didn’t say, who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? I’ll tell you.Jesus is the man in whom the will of God is fulfilled.And that will be true of every child born of a woman. Jesus is the man who accomplishes the work that his father gave him to do. And when he accomplishes that work,he is his Father.Man matures when he becomes his own father. And the day will come, everyone will awake, and he will be the Father. And that is when he fulfills the will of God as we are told in Jeremiah, the 23rd chapter. The word is wrongly translated, anger. “The anger of the Lord will not turn back.” That word, anger means breathing forcefully, a forceful breath. It doesn’t have to be an angry breath because you’re breathing forcefully. The wordbreathand the wordspiritare the same in both Hebrew and Greek. So, the spirit of the Lord will not turn back until it has executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days, you’ll understand it clearly.

From the very end, you’ll understand, he will not turn back because he has a purpose. The purpose is to transform man into God. As God, not something just to reflect him, butas God.So, you came down, you are the Gods that came down. You are theElohim.You’ve been taught to believe you’re a worm. You came out of the swamp and then suddenly you became a tadpole and you became something else. And finally, you find yourself a man—forget it. You are the Gods who came down from heaven and assume the restriction, the limitation of man, this is the limit of contraction and you assumed it. And you are going to fulfill a definite purpose in man. While you walk the earth as man that predetermined plan will erupt within you. And the whole thing will unfold within you, beginning with the resurrection. The resurrection did not take place in the Near East in some little place where they’re looking for it now. It takes place in man. Man is where God is buried. The Holy Sepulcher is the skull of man. It’s not in theNear East. The Bethlehem that they are talking about is in the skull of man. Zion, the holy place, where he dwells—that’s the skull of man. And the whole drama unfolds within man.

And man awakens within himself to find himself completely sealed within his skull. And he comes out like a child being born out of his own skull. And then a few months later comes an explosion in his skull and that compartment that contains the Son of God, who in his will, who in his wisdom, releases the Son. You would not let my soul remain in hell, said he, in the 16th Psalm. So, he brings him up. He resurrects his Son and the Son is David. And David, looking at the Father, and the Father for the first time knows who he is, memory returns. And the Son was the one who revealed him to himself.

So, the whole drama unfolds within man. And the whole thing is contained within the skull of man; has nothing to do with anything on the outside. They’re looking in vain, all the archaeologists, and they bring back all this nonsense. I was on TV one night with one archaeologist and then a Baptist minister and a Seventh Day Adventist minister. And here I am, all these groups around me, and this man brought a piece of cloth. And he said this is taken from the tomb of Christ. I said are you kidding? No, he was sincere, he was very serious. He’s an archaeologist. This is where, in some strange way, light has impressed upon it, this cloth, the image of Jesus. I said you are an archaeologist. And he was brought there with a Seventh Day Adventist and here’s the other fellow, he is a Baptist, and I have no degrees. None of these things that these fellows have. I said to the archaeologist, tell me, do you look like that picture? He said, no, that’s the picture of Christ. But don’t you know Scripture? It does not yet appear, what we shall be. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him and shall see him as he is. Do you look like him? You’ll never see Christ save you’ll see him in yourself. You are the Lord, Jesus Christ. The Baptist then said you’ve just taken from me 2,000 years of Christianity. I said I can take it from you, I should. Because if it’s true, I can’t take it from you. Andif I have taken it from you, well, then it’s good I’ve taken it from you. He didn’t like that.

All this nonsense, this piece of cloth, mind you—well that’s what our great writer said, Mark Twain. He went across Europe. Now, as he traveled, they brought pieces of cloth. This was taken from his robe and this, the piece of wood that was taken from his cross. He said, if you took all the wood together, it could build a huge house. And that was the cross he bore on his shoulder on the way to Golgotha. Take all the little pieces of cloth together. They could actually clothe an army, and people fall for it. Can you imagine that? They’re looking at the holy cloth, holy piece of wood. There is nothing outside of man. The whole drama takes place within man. He has nothing to do with anything outside. You’re living in a world of shadows and the drama is within.

So, let us now get back to this simple approach of faith. Do you know what you want either for yourself or for another? Construct a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream; just construct it. Enter into it just as though it were true. Feel what it would feel like if it were true. And give thanks to the one who is going to execute it. It’s your own being, I grant you, but he is the depth of your own being. He is the Father. You haven’t yet found him, but he is the Father. And you are now on the surface of your being, so fall asleep in the conviction that things are as you desire them to be in confidence that he will execute it. I use the wordhe,it’s yourself. But for clarity’s sake, I say he, because you’re not aware of him as yet. You will be one day. Everyone will be aware of their being. And because that being has one son and that one son is the son of all,weare one. There’s only one. There aren’t millions of gods, only one God; but the one God is made up of brotherhood and we are the brothers, raising ourselves to the level of the one God. And that one God has one son and the son is David. And I’ve been sent to tell you this and tell you I will and must. If only a few hear it, what does it matter? You hear it with conviction because I tell you the truth; they will laugh.

I am not here to set up some little “ism.” I am not here to speculate and try to set up some little philosophical setup that may work. No, I want no church, no “ism.” Just to tell you who you are. And you will tell it to others and others will tell it because, in the end, you’re going to prove it to be true. You can’t rub it out because it is true. All that I have told you is true. I’m not speculating. I’m not theorizing. I stood in the presence of the Infinite Being and Infinite Love. And he embraced me. And he sent me, after he embraced me. Therefore, love embraced me. Therefore, guided by love. We became one body. As we are told in Scripture, he who is united in the Lord becomes one spirit with him. So, in the end, there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all. So don’t go looking for him in any so-called holy place in the world. People are misled morning, noon, and night by so-called holy men—forget it. Man comes to you telling you he is a holy person, turn around, and start running.

All these holy fellows, they just simply meet you and meet another crowd, and next thing they do, they run to the bank. What was in your pocket? Just pick that one fellow here, he is flying off to Switzerland. He was in Spain after having collected a fortune. They found $300,000 on him. And he was at the Maharishi that came up through this country; it wasn’t the Maharishi, it was his secretary running off to Switzerland where you’ll put it into your Swiss bank. And all the people fall for it, morning, noon, and night. And so, if you’re taken over, you hate to hear it because people hate to know that others know they were beguiled.And so those who gave their fortunes to him, $500 to teach them how to meditate, of all the nonsense in the world. Teach you how to meditate? It’s just a simple, simple thing. You don’t meditate on your navel. You don’t meditate on any of these things whatsoever. You know what you want. What would the feeling be like if it were true? What would it be like? Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Well, anyone can do that. A child can do that. What wouldit be like if it were true? That’s meditating. Now yield completely and the being within you will take that and externalize it for you.

Meditating on your kundalini and all this nonsense. It hasn’t a thing to do with it. And going into so-called diet. Diets will not commit you or commend you to God. He gave you a palette, didn’t he? Well then, exercise the palette, too. And so, I’m going to go on a certain diet. A friend of mine went on the diet of things that you should only feed parrots, but she isn’t a parrot. Eating pumpkin seeds, eating all these things. If you really enjoy them. But don’t tell me that you really enjoy them. Of course, you could acquire a taste for anything. I don’t. So, you can’t. But exercise that God-given gift: it’s a palette, and simply enjoy it.

So, to come down to the night’s message on faith. By faith, the worlds were created by the word of God. Faith does not give reality to the unseen things.Faith is loyalty to unseen reality.For this thing exists. All things exist. I tell you of my own experience that the entire world that is unseen to this world exists now, it actually exists, not out there beyond the stars, right here. It’s all existing right here. And the day will come that you will actually awake and you’ll be able to step into these unnumbered sections of time.

A thousand years ago has not passed away. And two thousand years from now is not something that is going to suddenly form itself,it is now.And you are simply in a section of time. And the day will come when you’ll be able to move into any section of time. All these things exist now. And the purpose of it all is simply to awaken. And when you awaken, who are you? You are the author of it all. You are God, God the creator. And God, the creator is a Father. And the Father-Son is simply the sum total of all the experiences of humanity, fused into a single being and that single being personified is David. There is no other Christ. David is the Christ. The anointed. Listen to these words in the 89th Psalm, “I have found David.” These are the words of the Lord speaking. “I have found David. With my holy oilI have anointed him.” The anointed one is the Messiah. That’s what the word Messiah means. And Messiah means the same as Christ; it’s the identical meaning. Now go down a few verses and come to these: “He shall cry unto me.” That’s future. What I just quoted is an accomplished fact. “I have found David. With my holy oil, I have anointed him.” That’s done. Now, “He shall cry onto me, thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” That’s future. It will happen to everyone, but the whole thing has already been accomplished.

Now it’s completely contained within the skull of man. That’s where the whole drama is unfolding. And when it unfolds, you are God the Father and your son is David. If the whole vast world rose in opposition because they were taught differently, it will make no difference to me whatsoever. They have accepted some mis-concept of the great story, as told in Scripture. The New Testament only interprets the Old. The Old is the foundation. The New interprets the Old. Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. But Judaism is the foundation, that is the tree. And Christianity is the fruit of that tree. And so, to bring something else into it is stupid. Where in the Old, which is the tree, it is stated who is the son of God, and Scripture cannot be broken. And who is the one who is anointed with the holy oil of God? Is it not David? Rise and anoint him. This is he.

“And then the spirit of God came upon him mightily, from that day forward, never lost a battle. For I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.” And Jesse means Jehovah exists. Everyone one day will know he is the Father of David, therefore, he is the Jehovah who exists. That is what Scripture is teaching. It is not secular history. Until a man stops looking at it as secular history, he is not going to understand the Scripture. But to come back to our wonderful approach tonight.You want a better job? You want more money? You want this, you want that? Don’t be ashamed of it. Who gave you the urge? Your Father did. You have the desire. It came from the depth of your own being so he can execute it. He only asks you tohave faith. Faith in what? Faith in him, have faith in God. All right, where is he? He’s my own wonderful human imagination. I cannot see the fulfillment now, but he will do it, for now assume that I am already the man that I want to be and yield completely to that assumption and fall asleep, just completely fall asleep and completely forget it.

A lady who is here tonight, she called me up on the phone here just a few days ago and asked something of me. I will not tell you, it’s too personal. But she asked me to please pray for a certain thing. It’s so simple. I sat in my chair after I spoke to her on the phone and heard her tell me, but she came back tonight and told me. Yet it has happened. She is here, she’s seated here tonight, drove all the way from San Bernardino to tell me the story. And it simply worked. What did I do? It didn’t cost me anything. Are we not told in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, “come buy wine, buy milk, without money”—cost you nothing. What does it cost anyone to have faith in God? Why put a price on it? Why charge anyone? It costs nothing.