In this lecture Neville Goddard reframes Jesus Christ not as a historical man but as God’s eternal plan of salvation manifest in the human imagination. Drawing on scripture—from the story of David and Absalom to passages in the Gospel of John—he illustrates redemption as an inner, transformative journey of birth from above, death of the old self, and resurrection into divine consciousness. He emphasizes that truth requires an agent to express it but warns against worshiping the agent instead of the truth itself. Listeners are invited to personally experience the events of scripture—finding the inner David, witnessing the split temple, ascending and descending—to validate their faith. Goddard argues that faith in the truth within oneself, rather than belief in an external figure, is the key to spiritual liberation. He closes with practical encouragement to reason with others and share this metaphysical interpretation of Christ’s story.
Although only a few are teaching this wonderful principle at the present time, many others will follow; and because the Christian world believes in a man, this question will be asked over and over: “Do you not believe that a man called Jesus Christ walked the earth?” It is my hope that I will be able to clarify this point for you tonight.
Listen to these words from scripture: “You will know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Thy Word is truth.” And speaking of Jesus Christ: “His name shall be called the Word of God.” Here we see he has a name, so he is a person, yet he is the Word, the truth that sets man free. Confessing that he came into the world to do his Father’s will, in the 6th chapter of the book of John he makes this statement: “This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life.”
Now, there is not a truth (or a lie) that does not have a man as its agent, as it takes a man to express either a lie or a truth, and Jesus Christ is called the truth! So when you are called upon to answer the question: “Don’t you believe on e unique man was born in 4 B.C. and named Jesus Christ?” answer it in this way: “Jesus Christ is not a man, but God’s plan of salvation.
One of the saddest and yet poignant statements in the Bible is recorded in the Book of Samuel. David’s son, Absalom revolted against him and tried to take over the kingdom. All during the battle, however, David inquired over and over again: “How is it with the lad, Absalom?” And when he receives the news of Absalom’s death he goes up to the chamber over the gate of Jerusalem and weeps, crying: “Oh Absalom, my son, my son. Would I have died instead of you. Oh Absalom, my son, my son.” This is a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way of the story recorded in the New Testament.
In the New Testament, we find that God the Father does that which David longed to do. He longed to give his life to restore his son, but he couldn’t do it, for only God can give his live to save his Son. Speaking to humanity, Blake put these words into the mouth of Jesus: “Fear not! Unless I die thou can’st not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me. Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” God died by emptying himself of his divinity. He is not pretending he is dead, but actually becomes the very breath of life of every child born of woman.
Now walking in the forgetfulness of Man, God has prepared a plan for his return, a plan whereby everyone is redeemed.
This plan of redemption is Jesus Christ, but because it is personified man has taken the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction, and the agent that expressed the great truth for the truth expressed. If truth is to be expressed, it takes an individual man to express it. Therefore, when the story of redemption unfolds in a man, he relates his own experience.
Now we are told: “Everyone who sees and believes in the Son has eternal life.” The words “see” and “know” the same in both Hebrew and Greek, so if tonight I paint a word picture of the plan of salvation, I am showing you God’s Son. It does not necessarily follow that you will understand what I am saying and believe me, so the statement is made: “To everyone who sees the Son and believes ” Tonight I hope I can tell it so clearly that everyone can follow and understand what I say and accept it!
Jesus Christ is not a man! He is not a person, but God’s plan of redemption which must be discovered and understood. To enter this world one must wear a body of flesh and blood; yet we are told that flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. It takes a spiritual body to enter that kingdom and my words are spirit! If I tell you a story that many in this audience have experienced, and you accept it, you too will experience the truth that will set you free. No man can set you free. This man called Neville is simply an agent expressing truth. It is not good enough for you to just understand it. You must believe – not in Neville – but in the truth he is expressing from this platform and his books. If I lie and you believe what I say then you can’t prove it and will remain a slave. And oh, the pain that is promised to the teacher who dares to lie and mislead those who trust him. (Read it in the Book of James.)
I am telling you what I have experienced, so I can’t lie. Jesus Christ, God’s story of salvation, has been fulfilled in me. I have experienced the birth; the discovery of God who is David; the splitting of the temple which is one’s body, the ascent of the Son of man into heaven, and the descent of the dove. The majority of the people of the world will not accept my story, for they want a person on the outside as their personal savior. Tonight many who are facing their inevitable departure from this world are hoping to meet what they call their “savior,” but their savior is a plan of salvation who is God Himself!
When they ask you the question and insist on a Yes or No answer, ask them to come and reason with you in this manner: You believe in scripture? Let us turn to the 11th chapter of Matthew and read the story concerning John the Baptist. It is said of him: “Among those born of woman, none is greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Now let me ask you: Is Jesus Christ man of flesh and blood? Then he is not greater than John the Baptist. You don’t believe that? Well, it was Jesus Christ who made the statement: “No one born of women is greater than John the Baptist.” If you insist that Jesus Christ was born of woman and therefore in this world of flesh and blood, then he is not greater than John the Baptist. In fact, if you insist that Jesus Christ is a man of flesh and blood, and the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John, then is he not also greater than Jesus Christ?
God’s plan of salvation, is an entirely supernatural drama and hasn’t a thing to do with any child which came (or comes) from the womb of a woman. His story takes place in an entirely different area, for man comes out of his own skull. That’s the birth from above. There is a wonderful hiddenness of Christ in the 6th, 8th, 18th and 19th chapters of the Gospel of John.“Isn’t this Joseph’s son? How can he now say: ‘I came down from heaven'”? He is Joseph’s son in the eyes of hundreds of millions of people, but Jesus doesn’t make that confession. Rather he tells you: “I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me, and heaven is within.” How can Jesus be sent from heaven and be Joseph’s son if Joseph is a mortal man?
In the 8th chapter of John they ask him: “Who is your father?” and he replied: “You know neither me nor my Father, for if you knew me you would know my Father also.” In other words, if you know Christ in the true sense of the word, you wouldn’t ask because you would know that he is yourself. You would know: “My Father is he who you call God. I know my Father and you know not your God.” You will find the hiddenness of Christ all through the Book of John. And although it takes a man to express God’s plan, Christ cannot be seen by mortal eyes. He can only be known and experienced as the plan of salvation.
One who expressed the truth stood before Pilate, who said: “Who are you and where are you from?” And when he would not answer, Pilate said: “Do you not know I have the power to release you or to crucify you?” Then truth replied: “You have no power over me unless it is given you from above.” (This word translated “above” is “anothen” translated in the 3rd chapter of John as: “You must be born from above.”) His world is not this world, for did he not say: “I am not of this world”? The drama unfolds in an entirely different world and what I share with you is that which I have experienced in that other world.
Now, let me share an experience which was recently shared with me. The lady writes: “Last Sunday night I felt your presence so strong that I sat down expecting to see you. Instead all I saw were lights flickering on and off like fireflies. Then I went to bed and this is my dream. I was watching my tape recorder run, observing the tape move from one reel to the other, when I remembered that if I would arrest the activity I observed in my own mind, it would freeze. Immediately I stopped the activity in my imagination and the reel moved no more. I notice that the instant I did it, something in me opened and expanded; but I could not start the reel again until I contracted my senses. This fascinated me so I did it several times, each time realising that I could not start the action in my open and expanded state. Only when I had contracted my senses once more would the reel start and move, seemingly independent of my perception of it. And when I awoke I was disappointed because I had not stopped and started people, but then I realised the significance of the symbolism of the dream and was elated once more.”
There is only God! God in the eternal state of existence! God in procession and God in return! Her experience of the night is a foreshadowing of her return to union with herself! Coming into the world she has played her part and is now tasting of the power everyone will exercise in the new age, a power completely unknown to man. Man is frightened by his own little devices, and thinks they can blast the universe apart; but they are only little firecrackers. You might have seen yesterday’s Los Angeles Times where the astrophysicists at Cal Tech claim there are one hundred billion galaxies in our universe, with each galaxy containing one hundred billion stars; yet they can find nothing like our small little earth. The only thing in the universe that could cradle this biological experiment called Man is right here in our small planet – consisting of a sun and called Earth.
If you dwell upon this thought you should feel so great! The entire universe was created by an orgasm of God to produce this one little system! Have you ever seen the orgasm of a man under the microscope?
Billions of live organisms are there to attempt the likeness of the man, and only one is successful. Here is God’s orgasm, and one system comes out that can cradle his experiment to make man in his own image. There is nothing here that can do it! God had to die in order for man to live knowing “If I die I shall arise again and thou with me, for if God dieth not for man and gives himself eternally for man, man could not exist.”
When God became man he brought with him his plan of salvation, called Jesus Christ. The churches have organised and personified him. They have painted pictures of him and placed them on the wall, but that is not Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ is God’s eternal plan of salvation, which is expressed by a man. No one knows the authors of the gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are anonymous names of men who related their own experiences. Personifying the Son, they call him Jesus Christ, but man not knowing this cannot discriminate between the state and its occupant, so he takes the state and worships it. Jesus Christ is God’s plan of salvation which unfolds in a man!
Now you will carry on when I am gone and you will be asked about him. When they ask you if you believe that a man called Jesus Christ was born of Mary, lived, and was crucified on a wooden cross, tell them the true story of salvation. You can, for you will be witnesses! You will have been born form above. You will have found David, who calls you Father. You will have been split in two, ascended into heaven, and witnessed the descent of the dove. When you have had all of these experiences you will be witnesses to the truth of God’s word. As a witness, you are the fruit of the tree of life upon which Jesus Christ (as God’s eternal plan) was crucified.
Men are looking for that tree in time and space, but Blake tells us: “The gods of the Earth and Sea sought through Nature to find this tree, but their search is all in vain; there grows one in the human brain.” That’s where Jesus Christ (God’s plan of salvation) is embedded. Engrafted there, it grows and erupts into these major events until the climax is reached, which is the descent of the dove. Then the man in whom the eruption has taken place will linger to tell of his experience and encourage his brothers. Then he will depart, not to be restored to this terrestrial world, but to enter that age called the kingdom of heaven, where he will exercise a power greater than the wildest dream of mortal man. When God’s plan of salvation is complete, you have returned to yourself. That’s divine reunion. Then you will know from experience: “I came out from the consciousness of being the Father, and came into the world by being aware of its existence. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the awareness of being the Father.” Remember: there is only God the Father! This world is not some accident, but a plan to create and expand the creative power of God. There is no limit to your expansion, only a limit to contraction. Man is that limit. Taking on the limit of contraction and the opacity which is man, God unfolds himself in man to know unlimited translucency and expansion!
Jesus Christ is God’s plan of salvation. When you can see this clearly in your mind’s eye, you are seeing the Son of god, for God’s plan is his Son called Jesus Christ. If you reject this, you do not believe in yourself. The entire gospel of John tells about faith and lack of belief in self! John tells you a story about himself He is expressing truth and personifying it as a man and it’s the truth you should worship, not the man! John urges you to “Hold onto the truth, for the truth will set you free.”
If you accept the word of God that abides in you, you will know its truth and be set free. But if you say: “I want this wisdom, but if I could find out how he made his millions I would delay this for a while and come back tomorrow. I want the millions first,” I say to you: “O foolish one, your soul is required of you tonight. Tomorrow I will put you in a sphere where you will have your millions, but you will have to work for it.”
Don’t think that because you are now playing a noble part, you cannot move to an ignoble one. Just like an actor, you may play the part of a king on the stage of time and space tonight, and tomorrow be cast in the role of a clown. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” We are cast in role after role, until the work we asset out to do is completed in us. And regardless of what we do now, or our social or intellectual position, when we leave here we are cast in our appropriate roles. This I know from experience. Everything is done and everything is perfect. God planned everything as it has come to pass, and as it will be consummated.
So to you who are teaching now and to those who will follow, mark my words, you are going to be asked: “Don’t you believe in Jesus Christ as a man whose mother was Mary?” This is a question I have been asked all through my teaching years. Just before I closed last December a man took issue with me, for my words were in conflict with his concept of Jesus Christ. He had him as someone of flesh and blood on the outside and could not give up that concept. He has never returned, but that is the fulfillment of the 6th chapter of John, for when the people heard his words, they said: “These are hard sayings,” and they left, never to walk with him again. I am only fulfilling scripture. I tell the truth as I have experienced it and there will be those, like this gentleman, who will not walk with me again. He cannot walk with me while believing in a physical Jesus Christ, when my concept of him is the personification of truth, of God’s plan of salvation.
This truth must be expressed by man, so a man comes and expresses it. One must learn to leave the man alone and hold onto the truth, for the truth will then engraft itself you and unfold within you. Then you will know who Jesus Christ really is, because when he unfolds in you everything said of him is experienced by you. And when you read that David called God “My Father,” and David calls you “Father,” then are you not God? If it is said that God’s body was split from top to bottom, and it happens to you, are you not God? As these events happen, the whole Bible will open up, and you will see the wisdom of Blake when he said: “Rivers, mountains, cities, villages – all are you, for in eternity all are men.”
Scripture records that the Mount of Olives was split, but you will know that it was your own body that was divided. You will discover yourself to be the River Jordan, for there is nothing but Man. When you enter into the awareness of being the mountains, the villages, and the cities you will walk in their heavens and earth, for “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within you, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” All of the mountains of the scriptures are within you, as are the cities and the villages, regardless of their names. You become the Jerusalem, the bride who comes down at the dawn. Being God, individualised, you will personify God’s plan of salvation called Jesus Christ, for there is nothing but Man, and Man is God.Now let us go into the silence.
In the first paragraph, Goddard dismantles the literalist view of Jesus Christ by presenting him as the personification of God’s redemptive plan rather than a singular historical figure. He uses scriptural exegesis—particularly John chapter 6 and Matthew chapter 11—to show that ‘seeing and believing the Son’ means recognizing and experiencing this divine plan within. This approach shifts the locus of salvation from an external event to an inner psychological and spiritual process.
The second paragraph explores the didactic role of imagination in Goddard’s system. By recounting a listener’s dream about stopping and starting a tape recorder, he demonstrates how imagination governs perception and can be trained to access higher states of consciousness. This anecdote underscores his larger theme that spiritual power lies in the creative faculty of the mind rather than in external rituals or artifacts.
The third paragraph analyzes Goddard’s metaphysical reading of biblical drama. He likens scriptural events—the splitting of the Mount of Olives, the descent of the dove—to phases of inner transformation. These symbolic acts become markers of an individual’s spiritual awakening and reunion with the divine source, rather than geographical or historical occurrences.
In the final paragraph, Goddard addresses the challenge of teaching this controversial interpretation. He encourages practitioners to become living witnesses—having undergone the experiences of birth-from-above, crucifixion of the ego, and resurrection of consciousness—so they can confidently present this vision to skeptics. His closing exhortation reinforces that authentic faith arises from personal experience of the truth, not from mere intellectual assent or veneration of a religious icon.
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