The Bible is All About You

Tonight’s subject, as always—but tonight it will be more potent than ever—is all about you and you individually. You may not know it but the greatest book in the world is written about you. People spend fortunes having ghost writers write some biography for them. They spend millions renaming cities and rivers and mountains after themselves. Now, according to a rabbinical principle, what is not written in scripture is non-existent. The principle of Jesus or the drama of Jesus follows this principle. You may not know it; I will try to persuade you tonight that you are Jesus Christ. Everyone must experience scripture for himself before he can begin to know how wonderful it really is. That is why no account was given in scripture of the personal appearance of Jesus. It couldn’t be. Yet men insist on making pictures of this central figure called Jesus Christ.

My task is not the easiest, for there is no, I would say, heavier weight than that which is required to change man’s misconception of Jesus and scripture. We speak of dead-weights, but what weight could be heavier than to try to change a man’s fixed opinion when he was conditioned in the cradle, whether he be Christian or Jew. So he was conditioned as a child before he began to think and he believes scripture to be a book of history; and there is no secular history in the Bible. The Bible is sacred history and this history must be fulfilled in us.

Let us turn to scripture. The Bible is called the Word of God. We’re told in the Bible, “And his name shall be called The Word of God” (Rev. 19:13). So he, speaking of him as a “he,” is scripture. We’re told, “And my word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me empty, but it must accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). Now what is this Word? He’s called “the Word.” He said, “I came out from the Father and I’ve come into the world; again, I leave the world and return to the Father” (John 16:28)…but not until I accomplish the work he sent me to do.

Now are these two? The Word of God is called Jesus Christ and the Word of God is called scripture. Now, you follow this closely: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Suddenly this plan of salvation—for the word is logos which means “plan of salvation,” which means “meaning”; it’s a thought with a plan, with a purpose—suddenly it becomes a person. “He was in the beginning with God.” Now if the Word is God and suddenly now the Word is a person, is God not a person? Are you a person? You’re a person. Tonight I will show you from experience that you really are Jesus Christ.

You have to awake to it and become the Word awake or “The Word of God.” Now if scripture is his Word and the name by which Jesus Christ is called is “The Word of God” and we have just heard that he comes and all of a sudden this plan takes on the form of a person, yet no description is given us of this person…well, where is this Word sent, into the world? We’re told that not a thing out there will last, it will all vanish—the cities, the mountains, the trees, the very lands themselves will be submerged—but the Word will stand forever. It will never cease to be. It has to fulfill itself wherever it is sent. And sent where? Sent into man…and there it is buried in man, it unfolds in man and when it unfolds, that man knows from his own experience he is Jesus Christ. Everything recorded in scripture concerning this Jesus Christ he experiences…without loss of identity, without any change of individuality, just a complete radical change in his form that no mortal eye can see. He wears now an entirely different form that no man on earth can see.

Now does he first come into the world? I have heard people say, “Oh, wouldn’t it have been marvelous if I lived when he walked the earth.” What a misconception! “If I had only lived when he walked, even if I didn’t understand it, to say I actually walked when he walked”…as though he were another. They would give anything to have walked when he walked as something other than themselves. This is the first appearance of Jesus when you hear the message of salvation. It comes through the lesser revelation to the ear, the 42nd chapter of Job, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear” (verse 5). And then we find it in the 10th of Romans, “And faith comes through hearing and hearing comes by the preaching of Christ” (verse 17). Then we read it, almost as a criticism, in the 3rd chapter of Galatians, “So let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having heard the Spirit and received the Spirit through hearing by faith, are you now going to follow the flesh? And turn to a man of flesh and blood (verse 2)?” “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1Cor. 15:50).

So you heard it first and you accepted it. The acceptance of the plan of salvation was his first appearance through the lesser revelation to the ear. And so, it was dramatized as though I took a book and read through the plan of God’s salvation. Of whom? Of himself. God prepared the way for himself to return; for when you experience scripture, it’s not another, it’s yourself. All that is said in scripture of the Word of God unfolds in you as a personal experience. Therefore, who was experiencing it when God and the Word are one? Is it not God? Well, if you’re saved in this manner, is it not saving himself? Are you not then that self that he saves? There is only God.

So the lesser comes from the ear and to the ear. I’ll take the story and tell you, not as you heard it in the cradle, as I have experienced it. You hear it either with acceptance, or you reject it, it’s entirely up to you, and continue the sleep, the deep, deep sleep in the grave. Then the second appearance, the second coming, is when the Word is experienced in you and by you. Then you can say scripture must be fulfilled in me (Luke 22:37). And beginning with Moses in the law and all the prophets and the psalms, you will interpret to all all the things concerning yourself. So when he comes, that second coming is simply the fulfillment in you of what you heard and accepted with faith. I can take that story as told in Galatians, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Who bewitched you? He was portrayed as crucified. “Now let me ask you only this, did you receive the Spirit by works of the law”—external ceremony, ritual, and all these things—“or by hearing with faith?” When the drama was told you, you saw it mentally; you heard it and you believed it. Now, having accepted it, are you going to turn back to the flesh and see now a man of flesh and blood? Then he tells them, even though my thought was once absorbed with the human Christ, I see him so no longer (2Cor. 5:16). He experienced scripture; having experienced it, he couldn’t turn to any outside man. See, there is only God in the world. The word Jesus means Jehovah. It means “Jehovah is salvation.” Scripture recognizes only one Savior, that is, Jehovah. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior…I know not any.” Read it in the 43rd and 45th of Isaiah (verses 3, 2, respectively). So the only God is the God who is actually buried in man.

Now, this whole drama begins with the resurrection. Man is redeemed. For man is born again into an entirely different world, differently formed, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So when you experience the resurrection, there is no other. If you had any doubts in your mind as to who you are, and if only Jesus Christ is resurrected, and by his resurrection I am reborn (1Pet.1:3). I know I was born on the heels of the resurrection—but I was the resurrected. So if I am the resurrected and only Jesus Christ is resurrected, well, I know who he is. So go and tell it, go and preach the story of salvation. We’ve all heard it incorrectly. Priests will circumnavigate the world to make one proselyte and bar him from going in, because they themselves have lost the key. They’re so completely concerned with ritual and outside paraphernalia they know nothing of the kingdom of God within them. And this whole drama must unfold within us.

So the pathway of salvation is so very short, really. When the first bud appears, the tree falls into bloom in just three and a half years…just completely falls into full bloom in three and a half years. No one can see the bloom, no mortal eye can see the flowers, no mortal eye sees that Tree of Life in full bloom. There are those who have experienced scripture. So you walk the earth completely unknown, for you are the lit Tree of Life, and no one sees the tree in bloom. But I tell you from experience, when the first flower appears which is the resurrection on the heels comes the birth. Then the others quickly unfold and it takes three and a half years as told us in the end of Daniel (12:4). Seal it; no one can break the seal until he comes ___(??). It’s broken in him. And no one walking this earth could ever have foretold the manner in which the flowers will appear. Judging the world only through mortal eyes, how could you ever conceive of the resurrection in the way that it actually happens? How could you ever have foreseen it? But it comes not at the end of history but within history. While you’re walking this earth it happens within history.

You tell it to those who have been misled and you hear nothing but deaf ears. They blind their eyes…they don’t want to see it. Your most intimate friends don’t want to see it. It’s not the way they heard it. And there is no dead-lift so heavy, but really none, as that which requires this to change man’s misconception, no greater. You name one…where your most intimate friend turns his back and pities. When your brothers and your sisters and those who truly love you, and have proven it by their gifts and their actions towards you, if you raise one finger to change the course of their fixation, they’ll have no part. Again, scripture…and his brothers did not believe him. If they believed you, it would not be the fulfillment of scripture…just as though they had to start with a misconception and hear the Word along the way; and some toy with it and wonder if it is true as they go their way, if the time is right. For it cannot happen before its time.

The prophets who prophesied of this grace that was to be yours, they searched and inquired about this salvation. They inquired what person or time was indicated by the spirit of prophecy within them, the spirit of Christ within them, when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you (1Pet.1:10). The time had not yet come. But when the time had fully come so that one could burst, he broke it by beginning in the grave. The Book of Acts associates the grave with rising from the dead, and it is said they laid him in a tomb and God raised him from the dead. The tomb is present right here. Don’t be disturbed if you should drop this night. And what I will now call the tomb…I will speak of this…but, really, it isn’t this little physical skull; it is an eternal skull, really, in a way where God is buried, where no man has ever yet been buried. It’s a skull…it’s your skull.

One day he breathes upon it, he breathes upon himself, and that breath is called “a wind, the sound of a trumpet.” The word sound is simply a vibration or a reverberation or a tone like striking a tone on the piano. And all tones in sympathy with it begin to sing. So when your tone is called, and not before—he calls him according to his purpose—and when all are called, we are a tone unlike any tone in the world. You can’t resist it. When that tone is sounded by God to God (for you are God) and when he sounds that tone, you begin to stir, and you can’t stop it. You begin to awake and awake and awake, and finally you are awake as you have never been awake before. And where are you?—in your skull. You know it to be a sepulcher and you know that someone placed you there because they thought you dead. So you understand the words, “God himself enters death’s door with those who enter and lays down in the grave with them, and shares with them their visions of eternity until they awaken” (Blake, Milton, Plt.32).

So this whole vast nightmare he shares it with us; for he is my very being, he’s not another. And when he awakes, I am he. I didn’t know it until that moment when there was no one but myself, yet I am in the sepulcher, I am in Golgotha. And there isn’t the slightest little opening, not a hole, nothing leads out, and I’m sealed as an egg. Yet I know that if I could but push the base of this skull, I would get out. And so I push and out I begin to come, like one being born. So it is said truly that I am reborn by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s out you come, and you don’t see yourself…no one sees you, for you’re not clothed in this garment. You see this garment on the bed. You see the garment out of which you’ve just emerged, but you don’t see yourself. You are God and God is Spirit. Therefore, no one can see the Father at any time but the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Mat. 11:27). So your next step is going to be the revelation coming from the Son.

Strangely enough, all of these experiences save the one with the Father take you by surprise. You cannot say I did this before. You cannot say that you have any memory of this. The only memory is God’s written Word. If you’re familiar with it, you can go back and find out the witness that was recorded in the written Word. When it comes to the Son revealing you, memory returns. It doesn’t seem to have any beginning. It’s something you’ve always been, the Father. You didn’t know it until that moment, because memory hadn’t returned. But this is the one event of the unfolding four where memory plays the part, and suddenly you know. There is no uncertainty in you concerning this relationship between you and God’s only begotten Son (Ps.2:7)…and you know who you are. You know you are the being spoken of in scripture as Jehovah, called Jesus Christ; for both are one, and that one is the Father of this Son [David].

The others, they take you suddenly and by surprise, but you cannot honestly say you played the part before. All these other events are new. They were foretold you by yourself, and you believed it, and became subject unto death, even death upon the cross (Phil. 2:7). To do it, you had to empty yourself of all that you are and you are God. So you emptied yourself of being God and took the form of death called man. Only one of the events is memory, all the others were foretold you. So when he comes he tells you, I will bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you. But this concerning the Father is something that everyone has as memory, but memory has vanished. It’s like being in a deep, deep coma. And you know the party well, you can scream at him and tell him you know all about him and tell him…but he can’t remember. So I can tell you from now to the ends of time about David and his relationship to you, but not until memory returns do you fully understand this relationship and how you’ve always known it. You were always his Father.

Now listen to the words, we’re told the Word cannot return void; it must accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Is. 55:11). Now, he said, “I’ve glorified thee on earth” (John 17:4). Glorification is equated with lifting up the Son of man. He said, my hour has come, the hour for the Son of man to be glorified. I’ve glorified thee on earth, now “Father, return unto me the glory that is mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was made” (John 17:5). I’m not asking for anything that was not mine. He glorifies me with himself, and the self is Father. Now return, return that memory which I willingly gave up to do a work that I was sent to do. You and I are one; now return this unity by bringing back this memory of my fatherhood. And only the Son can bring back the memory of the fatherhood, so if the Son appears and calls you Father, then you know it. So when this rises in man, there is conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of men the divine name of Lord. And what is “the Lord”?—Jehovah. He confers not only his name but all that the name implies, for the Lord is father. So the memory returns and you are the Father. Then you mark the little time trying to correct the misconception, trying to show them the truth concerning God’s Word. And no matter how many hear it, if just a handful, tell it, because in the end not a thing will last but his Word.

Now this will not take from you a plan of all he gave you after he read you that message of salvation. He knew the horrors that would befall you, he knew the pitfalls. He knew everything, and he gave you a law, a law that would enable you to go through this horrible scene and be the man, the woman that you want to be…even though you know in your heart it’s all vanity…it’s all going to pass away. Yet until it passes away you can have it. Take it all! Indulge yourself! Realize all your dreams though every dream will pass away. Man not knowing that, he builds his monuments and hopes to perpetuate his little name, and that’s not the name at all. None of these names will last, for that’s not the name. For, in that day the Lord is one and his name one (Zech. 14:9).

What’s that name?—Father. Just one…you are the Father and I am the Father, there’s only one Father. But we can speak of fathers, because the book allows it. It uses the plural word Elohim. It was the Elohim who made the decision to create this scene. And the word is true, so we are the fathers, the Elohim. Put them all together, for it’s a compound unity. It’s only one Father, for all have the same Son. Having the same Son…must be the same Father…not one greater than the other. So in the very end, you will say, yes, “I heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” To see and to know are the same in scripture, same word in Greek; to know it is to see it, to experience it. So he knows now that he has experienced all that he accepted only in faith. And this is the one whose life is the life of every person in the world…Job. This comes at the very end, the 42nd chapter (verse 5).

Then we are told in the end of Job, all those who left him—his brothers, his sisters, friends, all left him—they came back and ate with him to comfort him for the evil that the Lord had brought about. Here was the most cruel experiment ever to be seen. But he brought it upon himself for he played the part.; he didn’t put it upon a man called Job. The word Job, the meaning is “Where is my Father?” That’s the true meaning of Job, “Where is my Father?” If he could only find the Father, he’d find himself. And finding himself, he finds the reason behind his suffering: for only through suffering would he come to the end, more brilliant, more wonderful, more expansive, more translucent than he was when he started the journey.

So don’t think for one second he did anything that was wrong. Read the story of Job. He did nothing that was wrong…any more than you did. To justify inequalities in this world they bring in reincarnation, karma, and all these irrelevant things, hasn’t a thing to do with it. You’re not playing the part you’re playing because of anything you did in the past. You’re doing it because it is the will of God. “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is born blind?” “Neither the man, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be made manifest” (John 9:2). You play all the parts…or you will. And in the end, having played all the parts you’ll forgive all, forgive every part in the world, for the same actor plays all the parts. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men” (Blake, Mar. of Heaven and Hell).

So the story of the gospel is your biography. No ghost-writer wrote it for you. It’s not of human composition. No man could sit down and compose the gospels; it’s all revelation, it’s eternally true and it’s your biography. So tomorrow, dwell upon it; dwell upon it as much as you can from now on. Try to correct your misconception. Well, how will I know that I am correcting it? Well, I can’t avoid in this land of ours seeing or hearing the name Jesus, can I?

It’s so much a part of our society. Well, when you hear it just watch your reaction…do you think of another? Then you haven’t yet corrected it. If you go to church and someone says, “And Jesus said” and you think of another, you haven’t corrected it. When you hear the word Jehovah and “the Lord God,” and you see a being on the outside creating, you haven’t corrected it. “In the beginning was the Word”—the plan of salvation—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). He was in the beginning with God. Here we find a person and you are that person. For God being a person, his wisdom and his power are personified. It’s his wisdom, his power buried in you as a plan of salvation revealing his own power, his own wisdom, but enhancing it as you come back.

So, when the whole thing unfolds within you, the last flower appears. Then you simply tell it and tell it and tell it. Whether they listen or not you tell it. Not a thing else to tell but Christ. As we are told in the 10th of Romans: “And faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the preaching of Christ.” What else to preach? Yes, I can tell you how to make money and I will. I’ll tell you how to get a home…yes a home. You may want one in the flood area. There are thousands of them. Down in Brazil tonight thousands of homes are gone. They thought they had it forever. Year after year we have it too, all the plots and plans of men, but it all vanishes; everything vanishes but the Word of God.

So get the Word correctly, get it just as it was intended, and get it from one who has had the experience. In the 10th chapter of Romans he then qualifies it: “And how can they believe in him of whom they’ve never heard? And how can they hear of him without a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he’s sent? (verse 14).” Can’t send yourself…not on this level. You are called and sent, and you are sent to preach the experiences that are about to unfold within yourself, to preach Christ, the true Christ…who he really is. So no man can ordain you to send you. And those who hear the story and believe it, yes, they can tell what they have heard from the one who experienced it. That’s good, very good, but the one he sends, he knows the ripeness of that tree and it’s just about to burst into flower. So he calls him in advance and sends him. And the one command ringing in his ear is “Time to act!” Don’t postpone it, don’t keep putting it off…time to act. You’ll always feel as Paul felt unqualified. He said, I’m not a voice. I have a thorn in my side. They laugh at my physical limitations. Moses did not volunteer; he was drafted. So, when no one volunteers for the job, you are called, you’re drafted, and then you’re sent.

When you are sent, you flounder because you always feel unqualified. Your background doesn’t qualify you. But he knows best, because no scholar can arrive at these conclusions. You’re not a scholar. He didn’t ask you if you wanted it, he said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Three times he prayed to take it from him. My grace is sufficient…I will be your voice. I’ll speak, I’ll put you aside and I’ll speak, but you’ll be the instrument through which I’ll speak. For in this instrument I’ll unfold the flowers and bring to completion my plan which is my Word. When they’re completed…no one knows the time, and you don’t have to ask when. The tree is in full bloom any moment of time you call him into an entirely different world, clothed in the one form, the form of the risen Christ. Completely transformed into the one body, that of the risen Christ.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Don’t let it shock you, don’t be disturbed when I tell you how great you are. This is not to flatter you, because no mortal tongue could tell you how truly great you really are. When I talk to you I’m talking to God! I’m talking to God who deliberately imposed this restriction upon himself. And before he did it, he had a plan, a plan to bring himself back to where he was but enhanced and expanded beyond the wildest dreams.

Q: (Inaudible)

A: No, my dear. The times are all like a play. We enter and exit on cue. You’re told in the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes, there’s a time to be born and a time to die. Man will not believe it. Today we believe, that is, our doctors do and our scientists that they can prolong life by proper eating habits, by certain chemicals. I read the obituaries in the morning and there are just as many doctors who are dying in their fifties, forties and sixties as others who never could afford to go to a doctor. Then there are those who live to be 108, 111. You ask them to what they attribute this longevity: Starting at 3:30 with a huge, big hooker of Bourbon! That’s poison to the doctors’ concepts. But this book, or rather, this magazine that my friend gave me concerning the dream, it speaks of the fashions we have in this world. You and I when we think of fashion we think only of ladies’ apparel, but there fashions in everything. One of the biggest industries in the world is simply industrial design. We change the bottle of perfume and we mark it up from a dollar, where they’re making ninety cents profit anyway, to twenty-five dollars for the package. They simply made it more beautiful and more attractive, and they change from year to year. But they said the most rapid and the most radical of all changes in fashion we find in medical opinion. I’m sixty-one and I recall in my short span, well, if you didn’t have your appendix out, you weren’t in it. It wasn’t fashionable to ___(??) and your tonsils had to come out. You mean that you didn’t take this little boy’s tonsils out? They should all come out; they’re nothing, they’re not used. And they all had these opinions.

I know in Barbados there was a cholera epidemic years and years before I was born. They still have the burial place, or they had it, but man realized that the whole thing was stupid, so they simply plowed the whole thing up, and now a huge, big lumber factory is there. But no one would touch it for years. It just remained as it was, the burial ground of the dead of the cholera. And it was fashionable not to give them water. The one thing they wanted more than anything else was water. Those who defied the order and could crawl out of their beds and go to some water jar and drink ‘til it came through their ears, they survived. All the others who had the opinions of doctors they died.

So they changed their opinions radically, and more often than any other profession. Yet they’re honored. You tell a doctor you’re not going to keep me here one second beyond my time, well, first of all he’s annoyed with you because you don’t treat him as a god. Oh, yes, they have many wonderful things to help you, wonderful things, and they can be a tremendous help to these little garments of flesh and blood; but don’t think for one moment they know it all and that in any strange way they are endowed with the power to extend life. Scripture will not be broken. We come and we go.

My father broke every eating rule in the world and drinking rule…he and Churchill. When Churchill came home, he always wanted my father, right away. ___(??), he’s the only one who could keep up with him. ___(??) drink me under the table. My father could hold his own with anyone…lived to the eighty-five. I still get the question, why did he die? They still want me to confess he drank too much. Mother never drank in her life and she died at sixty-two…never smoked in her life…lived a very quiet life, sixty-two. So they don’t bring that up. Those who just don’t like liquor—for millions of reasons they don’t like it—alright, don’t take it! You don’t have to take it. Some just don’t care for it; others can’t take it, it’s like poison. Alright, don’t take it. But don’t tell me that it affects everyone the same way, because it doesn’t.

I come from very big family. I took one man home back in the thirties. He and his father had had a fight. The father fought with all the children—he had four boys and a girl, he had lots of money, and he fought with one after the other, and then they all pulled out. He regretted it, but it was too late. He asked my father to find this fella in New York City and bring him home. We found him in the gutter, a real alcoholic. These were Prohibition days, before Prohibition went out. He would drink anything, drink it out of automobiles. Well, we found Ken and it was my duty to get him aboard the boat. Oh, what a ride! Picked him up near Coney Island, got him in the cab…he knew every speakeasy all the way down. He said, “Nev, I can’t go any further, got to stop.” Go in with him, they all knew him. Ken got his little bottle, a flask, out again. He drank it like water. Where he hid these things, I don’t know, but he had them all over. When we got him aboard the boat, I thought he would never survive the ten days at sea. He did. He’s still in Barbados and all the others he buried, all the doctors, all the people who felt sorry for hm. There goes Ken. Once in a while he goes on a binge, just once in a while. But he gave it up…not right away. And the old man when he died left him, oh, maybe a quarter of a million dollars well invested, so Ken just clips the little dividends. Has a couple of servants who’ll cook for him and take care of him and here is Ken, vegetating, that’s all he’s doing. But alcohol didn’t kill him, it preserved him.

Q: (inaudible)

A: What does it mean in scripture when Jesus cursed the fig tree? Every parable has one central jet of truth. When man is redeemed, he’s God. Everything is subject to his command, for that man is God. There is no such thing as “out of season.” So when something is not bearing when I want it ___(??). You couldn’t conceive of the infinite love cursing a tree. It’s to tell a truth. It’s to tell us something: Don’t accept no for an answer! When you begin to exercise this power, everything is against you, and they will give you reasons why you shouldn’t have it now, because it’s not in season, don’t accept it!

Until Tuesday.