Persons Represent States in Scripture

When you are reading the greatest book in the world, the Bible, always bear in mind that the person Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, Peter, Paul, any name if they’re in scripture are not there meant as persons: they are states.The name only signifies a state that they represent. If you see them as persons, you will never really understand scripture. They are simply the personification of these eternal states which were revealed to mortal man in a series of divine revelations as they are recorded in scripture.

Now tonight, we will take just a few. Go back now to Blake and his Vision of the Last Judgment, he said…now when he speaks of Satan, Satan is not a person, it’s a state, the state of doubt, the complete un-forgivingness. If they can’t touch it or they can’t see it then they cannot accept it. So Satan believed that sin was displeasing to God. He ought to know that nothing is displeasing to God but unbelief and eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The combat of good and evil is eating of the tree of knowledge; the combat of truth and error is eating of the tree of life. These are not only universal but particular. Each is personified.So when he speaks of Satan, it’s not a person…bear in mind he’s speaking of a state. It’s an eternal state into which you and I or all may fall where we completely deny a state because it is not in harmony with our senses.

Now when he speaks of truth, he calls it Jesus. And as far as Blake is concerned, and every mystic worthy of the name, a true judgment need not conform to the external fact to which it relates. If I say, “Aren’t they beautiful,” and you see nothing, and yet I am looking at something that I say is beautiful, well, you’ll think maybe Neville had something to drink or maybe he’s just having a little fun. But I am seeing what I would like to see, and so I am now looking at something that is altogether lovely. I place it where I would place it if it were true to my senses. And I persuade myself that it is true and to the degree that I am self-persuaded that it is true it becomes fact. So I discover that a true judgment need not conform to the external fact with which it relates. Satan insists that it must and truth tells us that it need not.

Well, we’ll take truth on a different level tonight. We’ll bring it back to this and then go back into other areas of it. Jesus is called the truth in scripture: “I am the truth. I am the spirit of truth.” “I came out from the Father and I came into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father” (Jn.16:28). Well, it didn’t make sense, because they knew his physical origin. Here is a man who is making a fantastic claim and there is not a thing to support the claim. In scripture…that is, you’ll find it in the Talmud, not our Bible, but in the Jerusalem Talmud…Messiah is supposed to come suddenly from some concealed state. As it is said, if he is in the world, he does not know it until Elijah first comes and anoints him, and then he will suddenly appear. But he doesn’t know it, even though he may be in the world, until he is first anointed by Elijah, and then he will suddenly appear. That’s what we are told in the Jerusalem Talmud. For the ___(??) expected was the sudden appearance of Messiah.

Now, it is said in scripture he is the corner stone. He also is the top stone as told in Zechariah: “He shall bring forward the top stone among shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’ (4:7). Well, it was said that through Moses came the law, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. So here he is the top stone. He’s also the foundation stone, and there is no other foundation stone. A foundation stone contains the whole stone; it contains the plan of a structure, the plan of the edifice, and its purpose, why it is being constructed. There must be a plan and there must be a reason for the edifice. So in the hollowed stone laid as a foundation stone are the documents and the purposes of the building. This structure is the temple of the living God, laid up and built out of living stones, individuals who are redeemed, all built into the living structure.

Now, here in the audience sits a couple. She said, “A week ago last Monday, as I closed my eyes in the Silence, I thanked you for once more explaining the law. I thanked you for explaining the law, and I suddenly said, ‘I know that.’ Then I heard your voice distinctly and you said to me, ‘Do you really know it?’ Now, in the Silence tonight I heard your voice as distinctly as I hear it when you speak outwardly to my outer ear and you said to me, ‘Do you really know it?’ Then I thought, ‘With my surface mind I heard it, but in the depths of my being not really.’ Then I saw a pyramid…with my physical eyes shut I saw this pyramid, but the top stone was missing. About the pyramid was a sphere and above the sphere a crown, a glorious crown. Then each was outlined in a scintillating, moving white light, and then the sphere began to spin; and all became so luminous and so brilliant I thought I would have to close my spiritual eye, for my physical eyes were already closed. It was so intense I thought I would have to close my eye. Then you said as you broke the Silence, ‘Good,’ and I returned to this level of my being. And I haven’t been able to shake the conviction since then that had my inner eye been stronger, I would have seen a being emerging from that light.”

Yes, she would have, but it’s not yet time. The being she would have seen would be herself. “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him” (1Jn.3:2). So when Christ appears in man, it is man himself.It is Christ who is buried in man, the only grave that he ever had. That’s the hollowed out stone that is the foundation stone, and it is your own wonderful skull. That’s where Christ is buried: God became man that man may become God. Now when I say man I don’t mean a little man, I mean humanity. Every child born of woman God became or he couldn’t even breathe, he would have no consciousness, nothing. But God actually became as I am that I may be as he is.

So when that top stone is ___(??), and it can’t be until the fullness of time, yes she will see a being emerging from that light and it will be herself as told us in the 1st epistle of John, the 3rd chapter. You read it in the very beginning, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall know him.” Why?—because we shall be like him. You not only will be like him, you will be Jesus Christ…there is nothing but. Christ is the plan of salvation, so forget a man…yet it takes a man to externalize truth. There isn’t a truth but it has also a man, therefore it is man; so scripture is speaking of truth personified. Man not knowing that thinks, “Well now, he is one little unique man and he is calling himself the truth.” No, truth must take a person to express it. So here, he is the plan of salvation. He said, “I am the way, the truth, the life; no one comes unto the Father, but by me. If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (Jn.14:6)…“For I and my Father are one” (Jn.10:30). Now you know him and you see him. I have seen the Father? “Show me the Father.” “Have I been so long with you, Philip, and yet you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show me the Father’?” (Jn.14:8). I came out from the Father and he sent me into the world, for what purpose—to bear witness to his written Word. I am now the living word sent into the world to experience the written word so that I may return to him not void. He said, “My word shall not return unto me empty but it shall accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing to which I sent it” (Is.55:11). So he sends me into the world to bear witness to his written Word which is scripture.

So here, the Old Testament is an adumbration. It’s an intimation of God’s plan of salvation written in the form of history, the history of Israel. The history of Israel is now actualized in an individual and he is a normal person in the world, perfectly normal, and they all know his physical origin. It’s not what they were looking for; they don’t expect that of Messiah. Messiah will suddenly come out of nowhere and surprise them as a being external to themselves. He wasn’t external at all. He is buried in that hollowed out stone, the skull of man…and he does come suddenly. When his time for awakening takes place, it’s sudden, and it’s all within you, and you are he. Then everything said of him in scripture unfolds within you in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience.

And you tell it…and all of your friends simply smile: “I think he’s touched. I know him, I know his parents, I know his family, I know all about him. And all of a sudden he dares to tell me that what is recorded in scripture as the fulfillment of the Old has happened to him, and he is the one scripture speaks about? Why, that’s impossible!” So then I turn the pages and I read now the 40th Psalm, “In the volume it was all about me,” (40:7), but I didn’t know it until it happened, and when it happened in me, then I knew the whole book was about me. Go and tell my brothers now it’s all about you. I am departing this world and I am going to my Father and your Father, I am going to my God and your God because we are one. There is nothing but God. God actually became one in a diversified state, in a seeming many, but you can’t speak of many gods, but it takes them all to form the one God: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut.6:4). The word is a plural word, one made up of others, made up of the many. So it takes us all united into one being to form the I AM, the Lord.

So when you read it, try to bear in mind no matter what word you see it has meaning. So you even take a word like Zechariah, as I quoted earlier the 4th chapter of Zechariah, it simply means “Jehovah remembers”…he remembers his covenant, his promise to Israel. Well, we are Israel. Everyone born of woman is destined “to rule as God” for that’s what the word means. Israel is “the man who rules as God.” Not like a god, like a little tyrant of the world, but as God.

So here, the shout “Come forward” amidst shouts, and you hear the word ‘Grace, grace to it’ and grace came forward and was brought forward through Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ—forget him now as a little man external to yourself—Christ in you is the hope of glory. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”—asked Paul in his 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians (13:5)—“Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.” You mean he is in me? And all things were made by him? Yes. And without him was not anything made that is made (Jn.1:3)…that goes for the good and the ill? Yes. You mean he can create the unlovely? Yes. Any artist can do that…he doesn’t have to create only the beautiful. He can create anything if he is an artist…and he is the only creator in the world. Well, who is he? He is in me and he creates everything. You mean everything in my world? Yes. Well, I’ll find him and I’ll put him to the test. And then I found him…I found him as my own wonderful human Imagination. That’s who he is.

Everything in my world came out of my Imagination. I may not now relate the unlovely things in my world to former imaginal acts, but I can’t deny those that I can relate, and if I can remember an imaginal act and see it unfold in my world and that is a fact, well then, I’ll go back. Though I can’t quite remember it I will go back. Jehovah remembered and Jehovah’s name is I AM. Well, I say “I am”…well, go back and see where I planted these unlovely seeds in my world, as told us in the Book of Jeremiah, the 2nd chapter: “I planted you a perfect seed, O Israel, a pure seed. How did you become degenerate?” What did you do? You went after foreign gods, Baal, and you worshipped foreign gods—the gods being astrology, numerology, or wealthy people, or important people, or all kinds of things outside of self—and God is your own wonderful human Imagination.

You sought other causes of the phenomena of your life and not the only cause that is God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. I planted you a pure seed. How, O Israel, have you become degenerate, to believe in gods outside of the only God? There is only one God and God is I AM. There is no other God. And one day you will find him. You will awaken to discover that you are the one and only God. But you’re not going to rub out your brothers, because it’s going to take all your brothers together to form the one God, and when all are formed, the top stone will be put in place. Until then, it can’t be placed there upon this building which is the wonderful structure that is being erected. For the body of God, the temple of God is being erected out of the redeemed of the world…and all must be redeemed.

Now, a lady writes (she’s here tonight) “A dream of mine wakened me at seven. I went into this exquisite jewelry store and I picked up certain items. I picked up a gem, a green one, and I walked out without paying for anything…a thing on this level I wouldn’t dream of doing…and it disturbs me that I could have done that.” Oh, you should be thrilled beyond measure! On this level you are eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Where you are, my dear—and you ought to know it—you are away beyond this dream of the tree of knowledge. You are eating of the tree of life, and you only fulfilled scripture, the 50th Psalm: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and all within it” (50:12)— and so I would take it—“The cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” If everything is mine, whose permission do I need to take it? You are already an incurrent eyewitness. You’re not functioning here save when you open your mortal eyes on this world. So you wouldn’t go into Tiffany’s tomorrow and take something out and walk out with it. No, that’s the world of good and evil. We’re all living in this world, eating of the truth of the tree of knowledge, this is right and that is wrong. Here we bind each other and all these are the combats. But in the tree that has only the combat of truth and error…if you are the truth, the whole world is yours, so why would you ask the permission of anyone concerning what you wanted? The hunger of a man is not only for bread, the real hunger of man is for the word of God. “I will send a hunger upon the world; it will not be for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God,” as told us in the Book of Amos (8:11).

So the hunger represented by the green jewel, the green being what grows, that which is growing, like the tree; and this is the tree of life, not the tree of good and evil. When you came down to this level you thought it wrong what you did. Yet I bless you for having done it. It was a marvelous experience that you had…something entirely different. Who knows what is right and what is wrong? No one is going to agree with another; we have different values. What is right for one is wrong for the other, and we came down eating that tree of knowledge. And the only thing that displeases God is simply eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil…and unbelief. “Unless you believe that I am he you die in your sins” (Jn.8:24). If you think he is the cause of my misfortune, then you will continue in your sin, missing the mark in life. If you know that the only cause of all the phenomena of your life is God, and God’s eternal name is I AM, well then, if you really believe, you will live by it. You will not deny the harvest that is coming that you unknowingly planted.It was not a pleasant harvest that you are going to reap because it was not a pleasant sowing; but you know it couldn’t come unless you sowed it, so you’re going to take it. But promise yourself not to replant it! You will accept it and plant something entirely different, something lovely. But don’t deny there is only one cause and that one cause is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God and there is no other God.

Scripture teaches no other God. But organized churches have made all kinds of fetishes and they build all these little things…they build their little icons. And people get down and genuflect before some little thing that is made by the human hand in violation of the 2nd Commandment: “Make no graven image unto me” (Deut.5:8). You can’t go into a church but these monstrous things are all along the wall. If they only had good artists making them, but no, they turn them out as you would turn out things for Disneyland. And here they go and genuflect before some little thing that is a horrible monster of a thing. You go into a home and you see all these little things in their home. I’m speaking from experience, because half of my family are Catholic, half are Protestant, and they have all these things all over their homes. So I am not speaking from what I have heard; I’m speaking from experience. I was raised in the Christian faith as a Protestant, and when my brothers grew up they fell in love with Catholic girls and a third of them married Catholics. But they were far more productive than the Protestants, so we have just as many in the next generation of Catholic children. All had to be raised as Catholics because that was my brothers’ agreement. All right to have children and whatever comes to our world will be raised in the Catholic faith. So they have all the Catholic children. And you go to their homes and here are all these things.

I don’t argue with them, because as far as they are concerned this is the personification of Satan. It’s not what they expected. If I would only go along with them on Sunday mornings and go and do all the silly, little nonsense that they do, wonderful. But when I tell them that suddenly he the only one erupted within me and then I knew who Jesus Christ was, they look at me and say, “I know your origin, your father, your mother.” Certainly you do, but that’s not where I came from. I came just as you are told in the Talmud. I was in concealment, but I didn’t even know it…not until Elisha comes out. Well, who is Elisha that should first come? This body on the outside is John the Baptist and this comes into the world, and it makes every effort to attain salvation by some physical means, like doing violence against its appetites. It goes on a starvation diet, only vegetables, for seven years. Ask a man in the restaurant, “Does this soup have any beef stock in it or chicken stock in it or any meat stock?” and he’s going to tell you no. He’s a liar anyway, because what restaurant worthy of the name isn’t going to have a meat stock in soup? But he satisfies your conscience and you will then order soup. So you are lying to yourself right away, because you know that it has meat stock in it and you really want the soup, so you take it. And then you don’t call it anything but vegetables.

So for seven years you get thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker while you are doing violence to yourself. You are young, virile, and desirous of everything that a normal man in this world is desirous of, and you go on a diet of celibacy, and have nightmares. Go into a depression, all completely down in the depths of your own being. And you wonder why is it is happening to me, I’m such a holy man? I’m so good I’m good for nothing. After seven years of this complete violence to the body, then you awaken.

Well, that’s John the Baptist. He doesn’t come until John is arrested. When John is beheaded then Christ comes into the world…so that’s how the man has to be beheaded. When he is completely arrested and restrained then suddenly out of nowhere he comes. And he who you are looking for suddenly comes…as you are told in scripture, he comes suddenly. No one expected it…certainly you didn’t. You go to sleep normally and suddenly in the wee hours of the morning this thing erupts within you and you find yourself in the tomb. The tomb is your skull. And everything said in scripture about Jesus Christ begins to unfold within you, but you are cast in the role in the first-person singular and present-tense experience. The whole thing unfolds in 1,260 days, just as told in the Book of Daniel (7:25) and confirmed in the Book of Revelation (11:3). It will take 1,260 days.

So you go out and you tell it. You find those who will look and say now he’s a little bit touched. He’s not violent enough to put him away, but he is a bit touched, because here he stands alone pointing the only way to the Father because he has experienced it. When Satan, personified now as error, has the authority of the world behind him; the whole vast world has accepted because all their misinterpretations of scripture are now the traditions of the church. And they go to church every day and worship their misconceptions, their prefabricated misconceptions of scripture. And one awakes within the world and he knows exactly what has happened to him and he sets out to tell it.I’ve gone on TV around the clock, on radio around the clock, with ministers and priests and rabbis, and they look at me as though I am completely strange when I quote their own book for them and say “What does this mean to you?” and then I take their passages one after the other. They don’t want to hear it. And I say, “Who wrote this?” Well, some prophet wrote it. Well, is it not said that David wrote these words? What words? Then I will quote the 2nd Psalm…is it not said in the 2nd Psalm, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord…he said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” (2:7). Oh, but Neville, that belongs to Jesus Christ. I said this was 1,000 B.C., this passage is 1,000 B.C. and it is said in the Psalm of David. David tells us in this passage he will tell of the decree of the Lord, and the Lord said unto him, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.” And did he not in Spirit call Jesus “my Lord”? Yes he did. Well then, if he calls him “my Lord” then who is Jesus? Because he is God’s Son and now he is calling Jesus “my Lord,” is he not telling you that he is God?

I said to a rabbi this night in New York City that he called me Father and is that not the fulfillment of the 89th Psalm? I have found David and “He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” (89:26). There he stands before me calling me Father, well, am I not then the one spoken of in the 20th of Luke when he said to Christ “Thou art my Lord”? They’ll put their hands to their ears to shut out this blasphemy. The same thing goes through and through the entire scripture. They call him a blasphemer, why? Because he said he came out from God and he said he is God. “I and my Father are one…only I know my Father and you know not your God. My Father is he whom you call God, but I know my Father and you know not your God.” But he didn’t deny him, he said, “You are my God but sound asleep.I’m going now to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” But you are sound asleep. Keep on in the dream until you wake and when you wake the dreamer is God. He is dreaming your life and putting you through all the paces; and in the end when you awake, you and he are one, not two. So he actually became you that you may become as he is.

Now, on the practical side…to prove that it works try it! Well, how do I put it into the practical side? I first must have a goal in life. I must know what I want…that’s essential. When I know what I want, knowing there is only one cause for the phenomena of life and having discovered that cause as my own wonderful human Imagination, I then conceive a scene that if true would imply the fulfillment of my dream. I reenact it in my mind’s eye, casting myself into the act. I don’t allow myself to be an observer; I’m a participant in the action, in the center of all this because it’s all about me. So I let my friends congratulate me on my good fortune and I accept it without any embarrassment. I accept it, and I enter into the spirit of the scene which would imply the fulfillment of my dream. Then I drop it in confidence that that imaginal act was done by God. Why?—because he did it. What’s his name?—I AM. Well, I did it. Had you arrested my thought in the act of doing it and you would have said to me, “What’re you doing?” I would have said, “I am doing so and so.” That’s when I called upon his name. That’s who did it and that is God…“My name forever and forever” and there is no other name that I will bear, just I AM (Exod.3:14).

And so, if you caught me in my meditation enacting a scene, I would have told you. If you asked me, “What are you doing?” I would have told you what I am doing and I would have said his name…what I am doing. So that was God acting. My imaginal act was the act of God and all things are possible to him and there is no other Creator. So he did it, and so now if I wait patiently and wait in confidence for the thing to externalize itself in my world and it does, then I have found who he is. I have found the cause of creation. Having found it, tell it to your brothers who are asleep, tell it to all who are waiting patiently for some change in their world and they’re not activating anything. They’re waiting, hoping something is going to happen on the outside and it doesn’t. Not a thing happens on the outside…you have to meet him.And if you don’t, you’re going to read the morning paper and get more and more afraid, and you’re doing something anyway because as you react to what you read you are setting it in motion. Or you turn on TV or turn on the radio, and you react to what you hear and see, that is an imaginal act, and you simply people your world with the unlovely things in the world. When they come into view for you to reap the harvest, you can’t relate what you are seeing to what you did; but you had to have done it or you couldn’t now reap it. Everything in the world is man pushed out…for God and man are one.

So when you read scripture in the future, try to bear in mind if you don’t have a concordance, try some way of getting the true meaning of the words. When you read the word Moses it’s not just a man; there are millions of Moses in the world but that is not the Moses of scripture. Moses is the personification of a state, and the word Moses is simply the ancient Egyptian verb meaning “to be born.” That’s what it means. You can take the word and get all kinds of lovely thoughts out of it—Mem Shin He—all right, “to draw out.” I can turn it around and get the word “name” out of it. I take the middle letter Shin and put that first, Shema, and get “heaven” out of it. So I’m drawing something out of self, and it’s coming out of heaven, and heaven is within me. So you can put it in that form, but the word is simply the old perfective of the Egyptian verb “to be born.” Something is to be born; therefore, it is an adumbration. What is to be born? That which is called the Word itself is to be born…the living Word that interprets the Old. So the New is simply the fulfillment of the Old and not the other way around. The New Testament simply fulfills the Old. There would be no New without the Old, and there couldn’t be a New unless there was an Old.

So the Old presents it, but in an intimation, an intimation of God’s plan. The New simply interprets, it fulfills; but man has misunderstood the interpretation and they all worship the state together…started worshipping Jesus, Peter, Paul, and all these states. They are states in the Old and states in the New, but the individual man interprets within himself the whole thing. The whole thing erupts within you and he is scripture. “He sent me into the world”…sent what? He sent his Word. Well, I am his Word and he commanded me, “Time to act!” Then I am sent into the world not knowing what it is all about, only knowing what happened, the vivid, vivid experience of what happened. I looked into the face of this infinite being of love, all love, and then he embraced me, and we fused and became one being. Now being a protean being, he now is God in infinite might, and as infinite might he commanded me, “Time to act!” And I am hurled out of that back into this little garment not knowing what it’s all about.

Well, I can’t rub out the experience. I could no more deny that experience than I could the simplest act of my senses. And that happened thirty-odd years ago, back in 1929. Thirty years later the work that he hurled, which is myself, erupted to interpret scripture. I began to fulfill scripture within myself. And then I tell it to those who will listen and no one comes that my Father hasn’t brought him. So he draws us one by one to hear his Word as it unfolded within the one that he sent, and some believe it and some don’t believe it. He has no way of knowing who believes it and who doesn’t believe it…only in the visions of those who come. He can tell from the visions those who accepted it. But he departs this world to return not to a restored society like this, but into the body of the risen Lord. No more restoration as all people are when they die here. They are restored in a world just like this, terrestrial just like this, with all of the problems just as we have them. But those who are redeemed, who have fulfilled the Word, return as witnesses to his Word, and they are incorporated into the one body. For in the end, there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: You speak of God disseminating into the multitude of the world, and yet in the same context you speak of him as still a terrestrial being or super energy or however you would like to say it…that he is still there, yet a new person injected into the world by him.

A: Very good. The world may deny it but I’m speaking from experience, I am not speculating: God is man and man is God. But in the world of humanity the one man which is the one God is fragmented, as told us in the 82nd Psalm: “And God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods (plural) he holds judgment.” And now he speaks to the gods and the same word is Elohim. It’s first translated in the singular, “And God has taken his place”…that word is Elohim. Although the word is plural, it is translated in the singular. Now it comes into the plural, “in the midst of the gods”…it’s still Elohim…“he holds judgment. And I tell you, you are sons of God, sons of the Most High, all of us; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes” in the 82nd Psalm.

So, the one becomes the many for the experience. You are now individualized, you were before, and you will not in eternity lose that individuality. You will tend forever towards ever greater and greater individualization by reason of your experiences in a world of death. For this is a world of death where everything begins and ends. But I cannot deny the presence as described in the Book of Daniel, called there the Ancient of Days. And he was brought to the Ancient of Days and presented before him, and the Ancient of Days, infinite love, asks a very simple question and you will answer as I did. “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered, “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love” (1Cor.13:13). At that, he embraced me and our bodies fused and we became one…one man, one body, one Spirit. Then suddenly I’m not before him or with him, I’m before infinite might…a being that if he so desired he could stop the universe or shatter it. He said to me, “Time to act” and with that I was hurled out of that presence into my hotel room in New York City. That was 1929.

Q: Well, that’s what I don’t understand. In the beginning he was disseminated into the multitude of people yet he still retained all of his power.

A: All right, we are told, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” He has never left me. I have no feeling that I am divorced from that body of love, though here I am clothed in mortal flesh and blood. But I have no sensation of being divorced from that body. And because he is omnipresent, although I speak of him as there he is omnipresent and therefore must be here. As told us in the Psalm, “If I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea (world), thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, thou art there” (139:9). Where would I go that God is not when God is I AM?

So it is something that comes upon one as it unfolds within himself. So he said, “He who sees me sees him who sent me” and he has never left me. If you knew me, you would know him also; but you do not know me, because you know my secular origin and you do not know my real origin. So we came out from God and fell as one man, O princes, for a divine purpose. By this experience that we have in this world, we are greater than we were when we left on the journey. There is no limit to translucency, to expansion; there is a limit set for contraction, for opacity, and man is the limit of contraction. Doubt, called Satan, is the limit of opacity or doubt—it cannot believe what reason denies, what its senses deny.

But here, when truth begins to awake within man, there is no limit to what man can imagine. If man can believe what he has imagined, it will come to pass. Whether he believes it now or not, that he could ___(??) himself of this, that or the other, it’s going to happen anyway. Everything in the world is happening because man at one time has imagined it. We’re going to the moon. Go back a hundred years and Jules Verne wrote a book and named it and told the entire thing about the trip, even mentioning the nation that would do it. He said it would be America; the Yankee know-how, the Yankee engineers would do it. This is 100-odd years ago, before we were really tied together as a nation.

I have a book at home called Democracy in America by De Tocqueville, a first edition. I love to have a friend at home, and I give him a page to read, read this one page, and they will open and read the page. You would think it was written this morning. It was written and printed in 1838. He tells of two great lands in the world—one will conquer by the sword and one by the plow, Russia by the sword and America by the plow. He doesn’t give you the conclusion as to which, if either, will be victorious…but then we were not a nation. California was not a part of our states. All the western states were not part. We hadn’t yet bought the Louisiana Purchase. We were a small little area on a vast land. But we hadn’t yet begun to expand and Russia was not a power. England was a power in 1838, France was a power, and Spain was a power. We were not powerful. And he tells you only two powers in the world and he names them, America who will conquer by the plow and Russia who will conquer by the sword. Well, haven’t they conquered by the sword? We just fought this fabulous war and Russia ended up with more land than she started with, almost as much again, and she’s ballooning with land; and we haven’t any land beyond what we had when we started.

We didn’t go out to conquer the land…and today we still conquer by the plow. We have the know-how and we can feed the world with what we know how to extract from the land. With all their power, or publicized power, what do they do? They’ve just taken over Czechoslovakia. Before that, all of Estonia and all those areas, parts of Poland, all that has been added to their land, and they have so much land. We haven’t added anything.

And this man wrote it, Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1838. I fortunately have a first edition of it. I love to just simply try…I say read this page, this very short page, and when they read it they turn back and see that it’s a first edition…and the dull pages… and the publishing house is long, long out of business…but here is the first edition, 1838. Here is a man with a dream. He saw these two coming up together, unnoticed by the powers of the day…and England was a power, France was a power, all these where powers and they were not. They were rising in the midst of them all and they didn’t detect them, but de Tocqueville detected them. He didn’t go beyond saying these two are the only two powers on the earth, one by the plow and one by the sword.

But we have the book of books in the Bible. The most misunderstood book in the world, because it is not history. It is supernatural history. It is not secular history and people think it is secular. It is not secular. The drama unfolds in the soul of man. It’s the eternal drama.

Time is up. Good night.