Man is Soul and Body is Emanation

Tonight, I trust will be a very practical night and all will see it clearly…I hope so. We are told in the Book of Nehemiah, the 8th chapter, the 8th verse, that “They read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood it clearly.” As they read it, they interpreted it.

So, tonight we will take a passage and attempt to interpret it that you may apply it this very night. We go back to the 2nd chapter of the Book of Genesis, and he said, “This is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh” (2:23). Here is someone making a bold, bold claim, and he’s called a man. And then we are told, “And now a man leaves his father and his mother, and he cleaves to his wife, and they become one body.” In this passage he makes the claim that she came out of me, completely out of me, and I will cleave to that which came out of me until we become one body. Blake makes the statement that “Man has no body distinct from his soul; that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age” (Marr. of Heaven and Hell, Plt. 4). He further states that “Thou art a man, God is no more. Thine own humanity learn to adore” (Everlasting Gospel, C, Ln. 41).

So here he identifies man as soul and that his body is but his own emanation: “My emanation, yet my wife ‘til the sleep of death is past.” So here is my body…it seems to be that I am wearing a body distinct from myself…and he claims that it is not, that he has no body distinct from his soul, that that called body is a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age. So, destroy the body, well now, how will I simply bring it back? It was always a part of me and I’ll bring it back by the seed of contemplative thought. I will contemplate myself as I would like to be, and reproduce that which was seemingly destroyed in the world, and the world would call it dead. No, I pass through the gate called death, and you cremate it, and here is a little dust, nothing but dust. But, I, by the seed of contemplative thought, reproduce the being that I am. It is my image. Here is a union so wedded it is connubial. I am so wedded to the image that I wear that you can destroy it a thousand times and I’ll reproduce it. I’m in love with it. There is nothing but my wife. This is my wife—a male, yes, the father of children, a husband—and yet this is my emanation. Regardless of your sex, that is your wife, your emanation yet your wife ‘til the sleep of death is past. When you completely awake from the entire dream, you and your emanation are one, and you are enhanced by reason of that experience where you emanate your own likeness.

In other words, as though you said to a beautifully cut stone “If it had dreams, I think this is what it would dream itself to be.” Did you ever go into a home, a beautiful room, and you can’t see anything that you would change you so love it…the library…everything about it is so perfect. And you say to yourself, if it had dreams I’m sure this is what it would dream itself to be. Whether it is inanimate stones, inanimate books, inanimate anything, this…but some human Imagination conceived it and produced it. Well now, this body that I wear and the body that you wear, no matter what you think of them, that’s what you, the real you, the God in you, is dreaming itself to be. It’s in love with its emanation. You are the emanation of God, and you are God, and there’s nothing but God. Destroy it and you will once more reproduce it by the seed of contemplative thought, bring it back into being.

Now we are told, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children” (Eph.5:1). Well, is that what he did? He contemplated himself and out of his own being he produced this garment?—yes. And this is what he loves more than anything in the world?—yes. “Naught loves another as itself.” You can’t conceive of loving another as yourself. You may think you do, and you will deny what I have just said and say “Oh no, I love this one and that one and my country more, my flag more”…you’re only kidding yourself. You’re lying to yourself. “Naught loves another as itself, nor venerates another so, nor is it possible to thought a greater than itself to know” (Blake, A Little Boy Lost, Songs of Experience). You can’t conceive of something and think that it is greater, and you revere it, and you reverence it. Oh yes you may…but if God wants me, if I am his emanation and God in me is my own wonderful human Imagination, if he wants me to know him, he has to raise me to himself. It is impossible to thought a greater than itself to know, so how would I know my Creator if this thing is created unless he raises me to his level? He has to actually lift me to his level that I may know him as he is. If I do not know him as he is, he will never have me as one who can see him beyond what I am capable of seeing myself to be. So God becomes as I am that I may be as he is. If he doesn’t actually become as I am, he can’t lift me to the level that he is so that I may actually know him as he is. So everyone here is but an emanation of the God within them.

Now, I would take it from here on this level. I desire and I name it, I don’t care what it is, I name it. Where did it come from? It came out of me…I desired it. Now I must actually do the same thing, I must become an imitator of God as a dear child. God became me that I may become God. I must actually…something comes out of me, it’s a desire, and I must actually become it so that it may become as I am. I name it, health, wealth, call it by any name, it comes out of me. I desire to be and I name it. I must go into that and actually wear it as God wears this. God is wearing this garment tonight; he’s wearing your garment tonight. His name is I AM forever and forever. Now, something comes out of me…I would like to be and I name it. As I name it, I must go in unto it and actually possess it and become it…as God became me that came out of him. And I must actually wear it until it seems natural, it seems normal. Reason denies it, my senses deny it. So what! Let them deny it. But in time if I go in unto the state and wear it as though it were true, and make it natural and make it normal to me, then I will externalize it in the world. It will become real in my world.

So I will take a cue from scripture, and “The man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of me, taken out of Man” (Gen.2:23). “And now a man leaves his father, his mother, and he cleaves to his wife, and they become one body.” Now I take it from this level and I put it into my Caesar’s world. It comes out of me…my emanation yet my wife. In this case, my wife now becomes a state called health, called wealth, called fame, called by any name. All right, call these names. Do I so love it? It came out of me, it’s bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. I must leave everything in my world and now yield to it, and assume that I am it. I dare to assume I am what at the moment of my assumption reason denies and my senses deny. As I move into it, it becomes bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. It came out of me and it is my wife, my emanation. Yet, although it is my emanation, it is my wife until the sleep of death is past. When I reach the very end of the journey, we are no longer two, we are one. I raise it up to my own level that it may understand me and see me as I am…for it is impossible to thought a greater than itself to know.

So if God would have me, his emanation, know him as he is to be known, he has to become me and raise me up to his level, for I cannot know anything greater than myself. I may simply worship some little icon and I may think, well, he is a wonderful man, he’s a richer man than I am, he’s a wiser man than I am, and he is so and so. Do I want to really change my identity for him? What man in this world would give up being what he is for any man in this world? He should be completely rubbed out. A man who would so want to give up his own identity for another…that man isn’t. No, you would like his wealth, like his intelligence, like this, but you don’t want to change your identity and give it up for some other identity.

So God is in man. Man’s own wonderful human Imagination is God. There never was another God and there never will be another God. And so he became as I am that I may be as he is, and he is raising me slowly through all the pains of the world that I may actually know him as he is. When I really know him, I’ve got to be him. I can’t be another knowing him. So I am his wife and he leaves everything and becomes as I am, his emanation, and raises me that I may know him as he is. In that day, we are one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all (Eph.4:4)…can’t be another.

I can take that same thought and take it on any level in this world. So you want to be…and you name it…I don’t care what it is. As you name it, it came out of you, it’s your emanation. Well, you’ve got to do the same thing as you are told in scripture. So I will read the book and read it with understanding so that the people who hear it will understand it. So you give it meaning, you give the sense to what you read. So here, “As the man said, ‘At last this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she came out of Man. Therefore, man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and they become one body.” Well, you know in the world of marriage we don’t really become one body. Oh, she’ll bear my name and my children will bear my name, but don’t tell me that my wife is my very self. She’s an independent individual with opinions of her own and she doesn’t reflect mine. We are not one body. We have together born a child and that child is as independent as a hog on ice. You can’t tell her anything that is in conflict with what she wants to hear. She is an independent being, so she is certainly not one with us, any more than my wife is one with me.

Then what is the wife spoken of?—this body. “Man has no body distinct from is soul. That called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age.” So you destroy it…tonight I drop and the body is cremated and you think, well now, he is gone. No, I restore it by the seed of contemplative thought. I’m only contemplating myself and I reproduce my image. I’m in love with it. God is in love with his image. I don’t want any other image. Well, I’ve seen it. I saw the being in contemplation. One afternoon, sitting in the Silence, not thinking of anything in particular, and here all of a sudden I see a stone, a quartz. Suddenly the quartz fragmented itself into unnumbered little pieces, and then it quickly gathered itself together into one being and the being is seated in the lotus posture contemplating the deepest contemplation. I’m looking at it…I’m looking at myself…here I’m looking at the very being that I recognize as myself. And it began to glow like the sun, and it glowed and glowed, and it reached the intensity of the sun and then exploded. Then I awoke in the room where I was seated. I saw the being meditating me. This is his image with which he is in love, and when he awakes from his meditation, I am he…it is God. In everyone there is God, the Son of God meditating himself, and he projects himself upon the screen of space and puts himself through all the fires of the world, shaping that image into the perfection that he is. For he is perfect and you must be perfect as he is perfect. When it’s perfect, you are superimposed upon him and you are one; and he is enhanced by reason of the experience in this world of death.

So here, we take it from there and come down to this level. We’re still living in the world of Caesar. And if that’s how he does it, then while I am here I start to try it in the world of Caesar. Now out of me comes not an expression of myself—I know what I look like when I look into the mirror, it’s not that that I want to bring about—but in the world of Caesar you want to bring about a better way of living, a greater security, a greater this, a greater that. That’s out of you, too. But in the same way we must become imitators of God as dear children as told us in the 1st verse, the 5th chapter of Ephesians, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” So I find myself desiring. That’s how it begins, “Let us make man in our image”…that’s the primal wish. Well now, as man, I want now to be other than what I am as a man. So that’s my wish. I must do the same thing that God did to make me himself: God became as I am that I may be as he is. As man I must become conscious of being wealthy if that is what I want, conscious of being healthy if that’s what I want, conscious of being famous if that is what I want, I don’t care what it is. Ask no man his permission to be anything in this world…you simply go right into the state desired. It came out of you, but you’ve got to occupy it and actually become it in the same way that God had to become you to make you God. So you have to become the state to make that state yourself. So what do you desire in this world? You name it and ask no one in this world if it’s possible. All things are possible to God and God dwells in you: your own wonderful human Imagination that’s God. There never was another God and there never will be another God.

So God became as I am that I may be as he is. And while I’m playing in this world of Caesar he tells me to imitate him. Imitate the same principle which he adopted in order to make me as he is. So, something comes out of me. What came out of me?—a desire, all of a sudden. But I can’t do it, I have no one to help me, I have nothing in the world. I have not the educational background, the social background, any background worthy of this that I now desire. All right, you desire it. It came out of you, didn’t it? Well, do the same thing;, imitate God as you are told in scripture to imitate him. How could I imitate him? He became me. If he didn’t become me, he could never raise me to himself. It’s impossible to thought a greater than itself to know, therefore, he has to become me, and lift me up that I may know him as he is. When I know him as he is, I have to be God, because I can’t know him as he is unless I am he. So I can’t know this now as it is unless I become it. So I move right into that state: what would the feeling be like if it were true? How would I feel if…and then I look at my world mentally and I see my world as I would see it if it were true. When I mentally see it as I would see it if it were true, I dwell in that state, I live in that state.Then that state in a way no one knows crystallizes and becomes a concrete reality in my world. How? I do not know. It has ways and means that my little conscious mind cannot fathom. If I dwell in it, one person or 10,000 people may be used to bring it to pass. It doesn’t really matter how many are used. They’ll be used either knowingly or unknowingly to bring about that which I have assumed that I am. So my assumption though at the moment seems false if I persist in it, it will harden into fact, it will become a reality.

Now, do I know that from experience?—unnumbered times. I could not enumerate and tell you how many. It’s simply a law by which I live…and hope I can persuade others to live by the same law. If you accept this law then you are free and you’re no longer a slave. You are as free as the wind. No matter where you are this night…you could be bound. If you actually believe this, you’ll become loosed, and you’ll be set free to fulfill whatever you are assuming though you be in a dungeon. If you don’t believe it, then you’re going to accept the facts of life and limit yourself to what your senses dictate, and there you remain, remain in prison, and remain bound in this world. But if you believe it, that all things are possible to God and God is our own wonderful human Imagination, well then, you’ll go out of here believing it, and live by it, and become an imitator of God as a dear child. Because you are destined, everyone is destined to one day awaken as God himself.

It seems the height of vanity, but why did God say, “Let us make man in our image”? Not the image of another. He’s in love with his image. Analyze it. “Let us make man in our image after our own likeness.” Well, to do it he had to become me. That’s the story of Christianity. He actually had to become man. So God became man…that’s what we are told in the Christian faith…that man may become God. And man has been taught to believe that one little man called Jesus…no, that is not it. Humanity is Jesus, humanity is the Christ. He became all of us. What child in this world doesn’t know that it is? If it knows that it is, it is saying “I am” and that’s God. That is God becoming man. Now, it takes it from there and actually raises that being through all the horrors of the world to itself. One day it awakes and when it awakes it is God, and there’s nothing but God. So he’s in love with his image.

Now, something came out of you. It’s only a desire, you say, but you fall in love with it. You may not really be interested in the ultimate at the moment; the hunger is not upon you. That thirst for God may not be upon you, but it could be a thirst for something in the world of Caesar. All right, so you take it from there, and you move right into it, and wear it just as you would wear a suit of clothes and make it natural. As it becomes natural it’s going to personify itself, externalize itself on the screen of space, and you will bear witness to the fact that this is how it works. It actually works in a simple way. That man knows what he wants to be, reason tells him he can’t be it, his senses deny it, he dares to use his Imagination and assumes that he is it. His reason now denies his assumption, but his assumption if persisted in hardens into fact. If it once hardens into fact and he sees it, then from there on he picks it up and continues…and eventually he falls in love with the ultimate which is to awaken as God himself! And he will…because God in man has determined to raise man to the level of himself, and when he does, he is God. There is nothing but God.

So in this fabulous, wonderful world of ours there is nothing but God. You can forgive every being in the world when you know this. It doesn’t matter what he’s done, whether it’s good or evil. What does it matter if you know the struggle that is taking place in him? You can completely forgive him, because God in him is raising him to the level of God. And may I tell you, we are all brothers…every one of us is a brother. And we came down into this world of death and limitation and we took upon ourselves these garments. We are the sons of God, all of us, and collectively we form God, the only God. But in this wonderful division we are the sons of God. As we are told in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, “There are no more people in the world than there are sons of God” (32:8). Limit them today as the world wants to limit production and stop the multiplication of children. All right, if you multiply them a thousand times over, or reduce it, still no one can be born who is not a son of God. By any pigment of skin, by any sex, it doesn’t matter, a son of God occupies that little body…whether it be warped, whether it be shrunken, whether it is demented…it’s a son of God and he’ll take it from there. All things are possible to God. So he’ll take it from there and raise it through unnumbered experiences to the level of himself that it may know himself. He wants to be known. As he is known by his image, he and his image fuse and they become one. Through the experience he is enhanced beyond what he was when he descended into these bodies of flesh and blood.

So you take it tonight and test it. “Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2Cor.13:5). There is no Jesus Christ outside of the Christ in you. That’s the only Christ and this is the cross that he bears; he is tied to this body of flesh and blood. He will rise not on the outside; he’ll rise here, for he’s buried in this garment. So you destroy it and I will by the seed of contemplative thought reproduce it and he’s still buried in it. So I go through this little gate called death and once more I find myself clothed in a garment just like this, young, healthy, and Christ is buried in it because I am saying “I am”; and that’s his name forever and forever. I’ll continue my journey, go through another gate called death, finding myself once more restored as a physical being until that moment in time comes when I awake within this garment, and I am he. So this is the eternal story.

Tonight you put it to the extreme test; just as we are the emanation of God, his wife ‘til the sleep of death is past, and he has to leave everything and cleave to his wife and they become one body, for there’s only one body. Now something comes out of you in the world of Caesar. There must be only one body. It can’t be you and your desire…you must go into your desire and occupy it as God came in unto his wish and occupied it: “Let us make man in our image.” He had to come into me. He couldn’t in any way make me from the outside; he had to actually become as I am that I may become as he is. So in the same way I must imitate him: “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” In the same way I will do the same thing now. I will desire, and I name it. Now I must go in unto it and wear it as he wears me. He wears this garment and he says “I am Neville.” I must go in unto health and say “I am healthy.” I must go in unto wealth and say “I am wealthy.” I must go in unto the state called “I am known” and say “I am known.” Whatever it is that I desire, I must go right in unto it and wear it in the same way that God came into me and wears this garment and he says “I am Neville”…in the same way. So we must become imitators of God as dear children.

So they read from the book as you’re told in Nehemiah, but they read it and gave sense to the Word so that the people understood the reading. How many on a Sunday morning when they go to church take any passage and really give it meaning? No, they take the pulpit and all of a sudden they start off on all kinds of political things in the world of Caesar. No one takes the Word of God and actually gives meaning to it. They’ll take one little thing and call it the text of the day. Then ask anyone who comes out of the church, “What did he say?” Well, he said, “You know what? I don’t think Nixon is doing such a good job.” That’s all that they heard. Not one word concerning the text or the Word of God, because not one gives meaning to the Word of God. But you can forgive them, you know why? They don’t understand it…and that goes from the pope down. They don’t understand it. If they understood it, you could not read what they say in print. It’s something entirely different from the Word of God.

We have the Word of God in the Bible from beginning to the end. Well, take any passage and try to give it meaning, because without meaning what does it matter? What would life be to us if it had no meaning? If at the end of one’s journey no matter what he has accomplished in the world and that was the end and there was no meaning…well, horrible…cut the child’s throat when it’s born. That’s the best thing you could do to it if life has no meaning. But find meaning, find a purpose, then everything falls into place. There is meaning to it all and the meaning of life is that we in this world become God. We only become God because God becomes us. If he did not become as I am, he could not raise me to what he is; and it’s impossible for thought a greater than itself to know. So I can’t know him unless he actually becomes me and lifts me to himself. How else would I know him?

And in spite of the fact that we think, “Oh, I love him more than I love myself”…well, I would not deny for one moment that this night if you gave me no alternative and you said either you die or your daughter, I wouldn’t hesitate to say I die. But it doesn’t mean that I do not love myself, the image that I am. I’m confident of restoration, confident of a complete change in my world when I leave this world. I would, without hesitating for one moment, say, “Save her. She hasn’t gone through my experiences, give her the chance.” But that does not mean that (___??) because I say take me now, shoot me now but leave her and let her have the experiences that I’ve had. For, I’ve gone through these experiences…I have fulfilled scripture. I know exactly what the whole thing is about, because I’ve fulfilled it. Everything promised in scripture has happened within my soul, not on the outside for human mortal eyes to see…but it doesn’t mean that there is still another that I love more. You may want to say that there’s someone I certainly love more. You analyze it. “Nought loves another as itself, nor venerates another so, nor is it possible to thought a greater than itself to know: and Father, how can I love you or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little bird that picks up crumbs around the door.”

Now, read the entire poem, very short, five or six verses. And the priest heard the little boy say this and then he picks him by his hair, and he burns him, tortures him and the poor parents heard the screams of the child but could not help him for he is the authority. That’s the world over. Here is this mighty one who knows right and wrong, good and evil, not knowing that it’s eating of the tree of good and evil that displeases God. If my mother, whom I love dearly, or my father, committed any crime in this world, I wouldn’t care what he did; I would still want him set free. I wouldn’t care what he did because I love them. But the priest couldn’t see this. It’s called A Little Boy Lost in Blake’s wonderful poem of The Songs of Experience…A Little Boy Lost. He’s having this fantastic experience and he knows he can’t possibly love another as himself or in any way reverence another more. He knows he can’t. Since, how can I love Thee or my brothers more, because he knows it’s impossible to thought a greater than itself to know. He knows that.

How can you? You can admire an Einstein’s mind. You can admire the great artists of the world. You can admire all these things, but don’t tell me because you admire them that until you are raised to that level that you can really understand them. But even when you can’t understand them—because it’s impossible to thought a greater than itself to know—don’t tell me because of their greatness that you love them more than self, because you don’t! We’re only lying to ourselves when we say I know someone I would like to change places with and lose my identity completely and become that one. I can’t conceive of someone wanting to completely lose their identity in the identity of another. Can’t be!

So tonight take it. As you’re told in scripture, God became man that man may become God. Now, be imitators of the same principle. Is God setting a pattern? Yes. He became as I am that I may be as he is. Well, finding myself in the world of Caesar, something comes out of me, but it’s something different. For I must live in the world of Caesar and Caesar demands taxes, so I want more money to pay his taxes, his demands, and Caesar demands this, so I must want that. It comes out of me. So I must do the same thing that God did in becoming me: he became me that I may become God. So I must become wealthy so that the state called wealth may become as I am, and so I become one with it. I move into it and say, what would the feeling be like if it were true? How would I feel if it were true? How would I see the world if it were true? What would I hear my friends say to me and what would I say to them if it were true? Then I carry on these mental conversations with myself from the premise that it is true and I walk in that state as though it were true. Then if it crystallizes into fact, well then, I’ve found the principle. Now I pick it up from there and I move into all kinds of states as I desire to make them real in my world. Knowing that he who became me is slowly raising me to his level, and eventually he will unveil himself, and I am he.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

First of all, may I thank you for your letters and please keep them coming, giving me your dreams, your visions and your experiments on this principle. One wrote this past week, he found himself in an egg, a huge egg. He felt himself completely awake, like a waking vision. There was a very thick wall and he knew that he had to break through that wall. He knew that when he broke through that wall he would awake from this state in which he found himself, which was like a waking dream. And then he woke. Well, that is an adumbration. We’re all like encased within an egg, and when we break that shell, we will come out. The shell is our skull. That’s where we’re all buried and that’s the egg. So this is nothing more than a foreshadowing of that day when he will come out, and he will be the being who fell asleep in that egg, and that being is God. So thank him for his wonderful experience and sharing it with us.

A lady wrote one concerning finding herself moving into another world. “I’m going into another world, another place.” But before she left for the other world she investigated the present world and it was all old buildings. Many of them had no furnishings and filled with bugs, but she knew she was going into another world…and carrying with her her child. Then she saw in this room devoid of furniture, save a rocking chair, a man in the chair rocking, and she went over to him and felt him and he was solidly real, as solid as any person she has ever known in this world. He was real, he was solid. Then she looked away and when she turned back he and the chair vanished. Then she went into the other world and someone said to her, “Let us see your baby” and she presented the child. For the child is the sign of one’s birth from above: “And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes” (Luke 2:12). That is a sign. It is not you; it is a sign of your birth. So she’s moving into a new world. Now, this is a most wonderful adumbration, a foreshadowing in the symbolism of scripture. Moving into a new world, for you have to go, and the sign of your birth from above is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. So thank you so much for your letters and keep them coming, please.

Now, are there any questions, please? Yes sir?

Q: (inaudible)

A: No sir! There is no outside force but that which we give to the seeming outside force.

___(??).Well, I’ll say this much about this power called Imagination: it will do nothing for us until we have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled. You can’t compel it. It refuses to act under compulsion. I can’t compel myself to believe anything. It will only act by persuasion…what would the feeling be like if it were true? I’m trying to persuade myself into that feeling. But to say I will feel it, it will simply bound back. So you cannot compel it, you can’t command it. It will only act by persuasion: what would it be like? How would I see the world? What would it be like? What would I feel like if it were true? And so only by persuasion would it respond. So try to persuade yourself. It’ll work that way, work like a charm.If you really believe your Imagination is Jesus Christ, if you really believe that that is God the Lord, and no other God, no other Lord, then what are you imagining? All things are possible to God; therefore, all things are possible to Imagination. You can’t deny that you can imagine anything that one tells you if you understand what he is talking about. You may not believe that what he has said though you can imagine it is possible. That’s your limitation, because you can imagine it. Tell me anything in this world, if I can understand the tongue in which you speak, if you speak in my tongue, the English tongue, I can follow you. You can take me into all the styles of the world…don’t take me into mathematics where I can’t follow you…but take me into any vivid description, word description, I’ll follow you. I may not believe you, but it doesn’t matter. If I don’t believe you that’s my limitation, that is not yours. If I can believe anything, I can fulfill it. It was said of I think it was Thomas Arnold who was headmaster of Rugby School in England, and the boys used to say, “It’s a shame to tell him a lie, because he believes it.” So the boys didn’t tell him any lies, because he believed one. That was Thomas Arnold. He was so given to his boys and so loved them that he trusted them and they all agreed that it’s a shame to tell him a lie because he believed one.

I’ll tell you there is no lie…all things are possible to God. What today you and I take for granted like going around the moon, tomorrow we’ll land on the moon. And turning on lights…do you know, when I was born we had none of these things in Barbados. We had a little carriage drawn by a horse, no thought of an automobile, an airplane, a missile. Yet all of these things are in our world. They were not always in our world until someone actually believed them. First they conceived them and then believed them. You can’t conceive of anything that isn’t true in God’s world, because all things are possible to God. But here we’re living in the world of Caesar…so make it a practical world until he who began the good work in you brings it to completion, which is to make you as he is.

But when it comes to opposition, you and you alone will give it, because really there is no opposition.The seeming opponent may be used tomorrow as an aid in fulfilling your desire. What seems today to be a disaster will prove on reflection to be the turning point in your good fortune.That I speak from experience. My father was a junior partner in a small, little grocery business, and his partners ganged up with a few others to get him out, to ease him out of that partnership, and made these false accusations. My father never looked at a book, so he knew nothing of what was going on, and when he was confronted with this false claim he came home and took to his bed for about two or three weeks. He was flat on his back he was so stunned by it all. And they thought they had him exactly where they wanted him, so they got him out giving him nothing of his equity. That was the turning point in our family’s good fortune. From nothing, but I mean absolutely nothing literally, and when he died in ’59 he could leave his family millions and millions of dollars. He had ten children. His wife had died ten years or more before—she died in ’41, he died in ’59. But in 1922 when this thing happened to my father, he simply didn’t know where to turn. But that was the turning point in his life… because he trusted them all. And then he went only on his own with no partners, just himself and my second brother; and he took it from there with a small loan from a friend, and then multiplied and multiplied and multiplied. What it’s worth today I haven’t the slightest idea. I do not know what the businesses are worth, but I do know they run into multiple millions. And he had no formal education, no social background, no contacts in this world at all, but he did believe in this principle and he lived by it.

So what seemed to him to be the end of the world was the beginning of his world in the world of Caesar. Every year they get bigger and bigger. You can’t stop it after a while. As long as they have good management you can’t stop it…simply gets bigger. They’re not “holding their own,” they’re simply moving out, moving out and moving out like a conglomerate…can’t stop it. And yet in ’22 no one would have given a farthing for the family. They didn’t have a farthing, they had nothing. But you see, he believed and he really believed it to the point where the whole thing multiplied itself from nothing. It simply became something and then that little something became multiplied.

So I tell everyone, I’m speaking from experience, not only in a mystical sense but from Caesar’s world. I’m telling you the story of my family. I’m also telling the story of Christ in me, because the whole thing unfolded within me. So I speak from experience and I’m not theorizing. As I stand here, I’m not in any way theorizing or speculating. The whole story has unfolded itself in me, so I speak from experience.

Well, until the next one…which is Friday. Thank you.