In 'Salvation History' delivered on 12-02-1968, Neville Goddard explores the metaphysical idea that God’s eternal plan of redemption is not merely a future promise but an instantaneous reality accessible within each individual. He argues that by aligning one’s consciousness with the life story of Jesus Christ recorded in scripture, one can actualize salvation history as personal autobiography, thereby becoming one with the divine. God, who is infinite, ‘invades time’ by inserting the narrative of salvation into personal experience, lifting the individual from temporal limitations into eternity. Christ’s sacrifice is presented not as a historical event but as a paradigm for inner transformation, where one’s imagination and faith fulfill scriptural prophecy in the now. Goddard emphasizes that eternity is qualitative creation rather than quantitative time, and that by experiencing the 'birth from above', one transcends mortality and continuously renews life. This lecture encourages practitioners to use their imagination and to dwell upon the promises of scripture until they become living reality. Ultimately, Goddard invites listeners to recognize their true identity as the Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the circle of divine redemption in each soul.
Ask a devoted Christian who knows his Bible if he believes in Jesus Christ and thinks of him as the Lord; he will answer, Yes. Ask him if he believes that Jesus was referring to the creator of the universe, when he said: “I and my Father are one, and when you see me you have seen the Father,” and again he will agree.
Do you believe that scripture is the word of God which is true and its truth cannot be broken? That Jesus said no one could enter the kingdom of heaven unless he was born from above, and he is in heaven now? Then Jesus had to have been born from above, would he not?
Did he not say that he encountered David in the Spirit, at which time David called him “Lord”? And did not David say: “I will tell the decree of the Lord, he said to me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’ “? If David called him “Lord” in the New Testament, and the Lord called David “son” in the Old Testament, are they not father and son?
Although year after year man has sacrificed the blood of an ox or lamb without changing his consciousness, Christ’s supreme sacrifice (as told us in the 10th chapter of Hebrews) is by splitting the curtain of his own body from top to bottom, and taking his own blood into the Holy of holies. And did not the Holy Spirit, who he knew to be himself, descend upon him in the form of a dove and remain there?
Do you agree that a man’s history is made up of all of the events he has experienced? And if Jesus Christ has experienced everything I have mentioned, do they not constitute his history? And you agree he is the Lord? Then I say: only when salvation history invades time, will man really know the meaning of life, in time!
As you walk in time, human history is yours; as you are born and die, restored to life you die, only to be restored and die again. Human history goes on forever, until salvation history invades time and becomes the individual’s autobiography. And if the history of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes your history, are you not the Lord?
In human history all things begin and end in time. Things appear, they wax, wane, and disappear, to pass through nature to eternity – until the history of salvation invades time and redeems the individual, allowing him to experience salvation history as his own.
Salvation history, belonging only to eternity, takes God’s creative power up from eternal death (called time) to enter the kingdom of heaven and everlasting life. That’s how God – having become Man – raises the individual to the level of being God.
Now, I did not ask these questions to test your knowledge of scripture, but to find another witness. That which is recorded in scripture is an external witness of my internal experience. Therefore, who am I other than the Lord Jesus Christ? This is my destiny, as it is yours.
Although limited while I walk the earth, when this limitation is taken off I – who have found God to be my very self – will join that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. Having experienced the only history of salvation, I know I am He! Although this experience is uniquely mine, it is not exclusive. Everyone will have this invasion and experience the history of salvation, for that is how God gives himself to man, that man may become God.
A man’s autobiography is his own personal history. When the autobiography of Jesus Christ was experienced as recorded in scripture, was it believed then? No, because the individual was known by those who heard his story. They knew him to be the carpenter’s son. They knew his brothers and sisters, and could not understand how he could claim to have come down from heaven. To claim God as his father, yet be one with him.
But I tell you: God invades time in order to fulfill his own prophecy, for the Old Testament prophesies all that man must experience in order to be redeemed. The New Testament then tells how the story of redemption takes place.
How can an infinite being give himself to finite Man? (By Man I mean generic Man, male/female.) By fulfilling the history of salvation spelled out in the New Testament as the story of the life of Jesus Christ. It is recorded that his birth was from above. That he encountered the one whom the Lord declared to be his son, thereby establishing his Fatherhood.
A son must have been fathered, or he could not be; and if you are a father, you must have a son. God the Father prophesied in the Second Psalm that David was his son. As that son, you experience the major events in the life of one called Jesus Christ, making the history of salvation your autobiography. Only then do you know that you and God the Father are one. Believe me, and salvation history will be yours.
John tells us that those who heard salvation’s history and would not accept it, departed never to walk with him again. (John 6) Why? Because there were still things for them to experience in the world of time, sadness, and death.
Every loving relationship will one day dissolve and vanish as one goes through the gate called death. The British Empire ruled for over three hundred years. Now only England is left, and it only the size of New York City. We are living in the day of the complete dissolution of the British Empire, seeing it dissolve right before our eyes Their literature and art will last, yet even that will have its day and vanish.
Although this enormous power called America believes it cannot die, it will; for this is a world of death. Individuals, families, countries, and traditions, will die in time; and the only solution is God’s plan of salvation – which is in eternity.
Eternity is qualitative, not quantitative. It does not describe duration, but creation. In this world all things come to an end. In our country right now there are individuals who have an excess of two billion dollars and are trying to increase it. Their billions cannot buy happiness; and in the not distant future they will depart and leave their money behind to be wasted by those who did not earn it.
This is a world of time, where all things begin and end. Although death appears to be, there is none. Those who remain, experience their death; but to themselves they do not die. Instead, they are restored to life in a young body with nothing missing. There they will get older and eventually die, to be instantly restored – again unaccountably new – in a terrestrial world like this one, to go on and on and on. That’s restoration; but the birth from above is something entirely different. That occurs when infinite God gives himself to the individual. He does it by inserting his story of salvation into time, possessing the individual, then unfolding himself from within, fulfilling salvation history.
The Bible is an incredible story of how God became man that man could become God. The history of God contains eternity, which has neither beginning nor end; therefore, salvation history is forever taking place. God’s will must be being done absolutely and continuously, because it is eternal.
When the history of salvation invades you, individually, you will awaken from a long, long sleep to find yourself being born from above. The symbol of your birth as that of a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes will be there, as well as the witnesses. Even then it seems incredible, as you hold the child in your arms – just as scripture states a child was placed in the arms of one called Mary. And if the child is a symbol of the savior, who is the Lord God Jehovah; are you not your own saviour?
Coming down to earth, God invades the world of time and lifts you out of time into eternity. Then you will return for a little while, where your glory is hidden by the garment you wear. You will tell your experiences to those who will listen, until that moment in time when you depart never to return again.
No one should gloat about this, as everyone will rise as the same being. There is only God, redeeming Himself into the one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all; and you will know that you are He!
This glorious, spiritual story doesn’t make sense to man, so he believes it in a physical way. And when it is told from experience, few will listen; and even those who do will not understand. Don’t expect them to. Just tell it, and leave the thought as a seed for them to dwell upon and maybe begin to hunger and thirst for understanding.
You see, God has already put eternity into the heart of every man. And when the time is fulfilled, He adds a thirst that only eternity can satisfy. So when you tell God’s word, and there is no interest, it is because the hunger has not come upon them. But the day will come when God will send a hunger – not for bread or a thirst for water, but for experiencing the word of God; and not a thing can satisfy that hunger but an experience of God.
In order for such an experience to happen, God must invade time and possess you. Then you fulfill salvation’s story, as everything said in scripture is experienced by you. Having come into the world – and fulfilling scripture – you will interpret Moses, the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, as things concerning yourself; for you will discover that the events recorded as happening to Jesus Christ, have happened in you.
Remember, not every word of scripture is significant. Like a letter you write, not every word has significance; but there is meaning, a purpose to your written word. When salvation history invades you, the meaning of scripture will be known from experience. Using the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, you will interpret in all the scriptures the things concerning yourself, knowing you are the Jesus Christ of which scripture refers.
The Bible ends on the 20th verse of the 22nd chapter of Revelation with these words: “Come, Lord Jesus.” The last verse: “The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you,” is only a benediction.With the words: “Come, Lord Jesus,” you are inviting Him to come, possess you, and unfold the history of salvation within you, so that you will no longer identify yourself with the body of flesh you wear, but become the very being you are seeking! And when that happens, although you will continue to walk the earth with all the weaknesses and limitations of the flesh, you will know who you really are.
Take my message to heart and dwell upon this – the only salvation! Every day, tens of thousands will die either violently or naturally, to discover that they have not died to themselves. Their body will be physical and their world terrestrial. There they will love and marry as they did here, for it is the same age, and therefore the same world as before!
When Jesus was asked: “Did not Moses say that if a man married and had no offspring and died, his brother should take her to wife and raise up a family for his brother? If he did this, whose wife would she be in the resurrection?” And Jesus answered: “You do not know the scripture. In this age man marries and is given in marriage. But those who are accounted worthy to attain to the age of the resurrection neither marry or are given in marriage; for – being one with God – they can die no more.” In the resurrection, the son of God is one with God; for the Father and the son are one!
After your resurrection from this state of death, you no longer marry, or die, but until then you will continue to fall in love, marry, get old, and depart. They have cemeteries there too, making money or people who own them by burying things that do not die.
If you and I had gotten in on the ground floor of Forest Lawn, we would be millionaires by now. All those people do, is play upon the gullibility of people; because no one who dies ever goes there. You might just as well take off the clothes you are now wearing, take them to Forest Lawn and bury them in a box. It’s the same thing, because you wear your garment of flesh and blood just as you do a suit of clothes. But in this age a box must be purchased to put the garment in so that people can make a quick dollar.
Yet the being who wore the garment is the creator of the world, and instantly created a new one to continue life as before. Now, wouldn’t it be horrible if life like that went on forever? Well, God in his infinite mercy invades time and redeems man in the one body of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Claim you are as free as the wind! Live nobly in your imagination. Dwell upon all the lovely things in life for yourself and others, as there is no other. Without loss of identity, you are going to know you are the one God who created and sustains the world.
You will know you did not begin when you came here, but have been traveling for unnumbered centuries. You have done violent, horrible things; yet God in his infinite mercy has re-moved their memory so that you could live with yourself. And in the end, when God invades you with the eternal history of salvation, all of your past will be forgiven. It will be wiped out as though it never was. And you will be redeemed with no memory of the horrors you knew in this world of time.
All things begin and end in time, but there is no beginning or ending in eternity. It just is! The history of Salvation was not composed by God. It was always so. It was His plan to be inserted into time and redeem humanity!
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard opens the lecture by redefining salvation history as an intimate encounter between the finite individual and the infinite divine. He argues that God’s purpose is to give Himself fully to each person, such that the scriptural account of Jesus Christ becomes the seeker’s own autobiography. Salvation is not a distant promise but an active, living reality that ‘invades time’ through imagination and faith. In this framework, temporal history and eternal truth converge, making every moment an opportunity for spiritual realization.
Goddard proceeds to decode key biblical passages, emphasizing the unity of the Father and the Son as proof that the divine life can be experienced in the here-and-now. By paralleling Old and New Testament prophecies—such as David’s declaration of the Lord’s son—with Christ’s claim to divinity, he illustrates the metaphysical principle that what scripture records externally exists internally. This hermeneutic technique transforms literal events into symbols of inner states, inviting listeners to perceive themselves as both the experiencer and the subject of sacred history.
Central to the lecture is the practice of using the imagination as the creative organ of consciousness. Goddard likens the act of faith to splitting the curtain of the self and entering the Holy of Holies with Christ’s own blood, symbolizing the transformative power of vivid, focused visualization. He contrasts ritualistic sacrifices that leave consciousness unchanged with the inner sacrifice that dissolves the old self and births the new. Through disciplined mental enactment of scriptural narratives, believers can catalyze the divine process within their psyches.
He further explores the interplay of time and eternity, describing temporal resurrection cycles and distinguishing them from the ‘birth from above’ that grants access to endless creation. While the physical body may regenerate, it remains tethered to time; only the eternal self—revealed through salvation history—can transcend mortality and live perpetually. By fulfilling the story of Christ in the imagination, one not only anticipates eschatological promises but actualizes them in every age.
In the concluding section, Goddard exhorts listeners to carry this message into silence, planting seeds of divine hunger in others. He underscores that God’s invasion of the individual is a universal destiny, promising restoration and forgiveness that erase personal history’s horrors. The lecture ends with a call to ‘Come, Lord Jesus,’ inviting the living Christ to possess the imagination and complete salvation’s narrative from within. This practical admonition frames meditation as the moment-to-moment unfolding of one’s true divine identity.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
